Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)

 When I was younger, I was a big fan of The Beatles through my mom. So even before picking up Norwegian Wood, I was already curious about what the novel had to do with the song. The full title, "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," comes from Rubber Soul (1965), which is an album that can be seen as  a shift away from simple love songs and towards more experimental and emotionally layered projects. The Beatles songs mentioned in the novel, besides the titular one are "Michelle," "Nowhere Man," "Julia," "Yesterday," "Something," "Here Comes the Sun," "The Fool on the Hill," "Blackbird," "When I'm 64," "And I Love Her," "Hey Jude," "Eleanor Rigby," and "Penny Lane." 

"Norwegian Wood,” however, is the most thematically significant. The second part of the song's title "This Bird Has Flown" is interesting to me as it suggests something fleeting, which is a theme seen throughout the novel, with Toru being haunted by memories of people who have left him. Naoko is, of course, the embodiment of this sense of loss. Even while she’s present in Toru’s narration, from the point of view of the novel, he is writing it after she has already died, since he is writing about his past. Thus, the story is of her slowly slipping away, until she’s gone completely. 

Of course, Murakami’s use of The Beatles songs also serves to ground the narration in the 1960s. In a way, the music serves as an emotional anchor to the era. The novel, in its structure, reflects the experience of hearing a song and being transported back to the specific moment in one’s life when it held deep meaning. Just as such, Toru hears an orchestral cover of "Norwegian Wood": 

“soft music began to flow from the ceiling speakers: a sweet orchestral cover version of the Beatles' ‘Norwegian Wood’. The melody never failed to send a shudder through me, but this time it hit me harder than ever. I bent forward, my face in my hands to keep my skull from splitting open.” (5) 

It’s as if hearing the melody transports him back into the past. The song is even played at the funeral Reiko and Toru hold for Naoko. Thus, the song remains even after time, space, and the people it was tied to are long gone. ​​

I'm not sure if the novel fully reflects the entire narrative of the song (which is, by the way, about a man who fails to convince his lover to sleep with him and then possibly burns her place down). However, the opening lines – "I once had a girl / Or should I say, she once had me" – capture the novel’s mood and themes of impermanence and loss.

Irina