Norwegian Wood

 I’m not sure if I liked Norwegian Wood. In a way, I think the ending was supposed to be optimistic. Watanabe survives, he lives, he is going to “work at making [himself] happy” as Reiko told him (269). I think this is why there are so many instances in the narration of the novel that Watanabe is speaking/writing from the future: the reader knows he survives, he lives, he does not commit suicide. This is powerful. But I couldn’t get over a couple things: 

In a Russian literature class I took last semester, we read “Serafim” by Shalamov. Obviously there are huge contextual and thematic differences between Norwegian Wood and this short story, but there is a similarity in that “Serafim” follows a main character who makes multiple attempts to kill himself and eventually dies. In class, we talked about how it is a huge decision for an author to have a character commit suicide. It is a very intentional choice on the author’s part, and often, the author needs to build up to it and explain why the character felt compelled and driven to take their own life. So, Murakami is very aware of what he is doing, having so many characters—Naoko’s sister, Kizuki, Naoko, even Hatsumi—commit suicide. I think this is an intentional choice, but to me it felt too cavalier (even though I think this “cavalierness” was supposed to draw attention to the seriousness of the matter) that Murakami refers to these suicides so casually and in such graphic detail, that he says things like, “As so many of those I knew had done, Hatsumi reached a certain stage in life and decided—almost on the spur of the moment—to end it” (212). I think this is so wrong! Suicide is almost never a spur of the moment decision in any way. There is always something building up to it, and to refer to it like that, to dismiss the seriousness of how that despair builds, I think, makes it seem inevitable. For a book that I think is supposed to be a powerful story of how we can get through tragedy and despair, how we can work at living, I couldn’t get over this. 

This ties into another reason I didn’t like the novel. For Watanabe to make a comment like that reflects a lack of understanding at some deep level. And yet, I think one of the most powerful points Murakami makes in the novel is about our attempts and struggles to open up to one another, see from each other’s perspective, and try to understand where people are coming from. Murakami weaves this into the story a lot. He opens the book with it. Nagasawa accuses Watanabe of not caring about other people’s perspectives. Watanabe always tries to think of how other people feel, even during sex (this is mentioned explicitly when he is having sex with Reiko). At the same time, Watanabe emphasizes that he doesn’t think of other people’s feelings in certain instances, for example hurting Midori by not telling her he moved. Yet, despite Watanabe’s attempts to understand other people, he never does what is most crucial in allowing this: he never opens up, and almost none of the other characters do either.

    I feel like I have so much to say about this, but I'll stop here.

 

Hallie