From Kenza: Desire

Murakami elaborates on a range of human desires and each character’s attempts to obtain the power to control what they need in life. One route followed is the path of sexual development often linked to each character's journey of self discovery. Some characters in the novel are portrayed as victims of desire, whether their own or that of others. These characters include Toru, Kumiko, Noburo Wataya and Creta Kano. Of these, Kumiko is the one that suffers the most from the things she does in order to deal with her restlessness and unhappiness by attempting fill the vacuum by transposing her inexpressible desires through a sexual outlet. Her desire leads her to commit adultery with another man, but results only in abysmal self-hatred and frustration. She abandons everything she has worked for and put up with in the last six years and moves away from her home. May Kasahara’s desire is portrayed differently. Her part in the motorcycle accident that killed her boyfriend can be seen as her desire to indulge some uncontrollable part of herself. It is almost as if she can’t help herself from testing her limits until she proves the control she can have over herself. Noburo Wataya is another character that is a victim of desire. The desire he feels has to do with his growing thirst for power. The many and various forms of desire expressed by the characters imply how we are often victims of impulses we do not understand and have difficulty controlling.

From Kenza: Why so much violence?

Violence is omnipresent in this novel. It is both vivid and surreal.  Creta's experience growing up with intense physical pain is conveyed through intense descriptions so we become aware of the different levels of pain that a human being is able to feel. This horrifying pain is portrayed as a form of violence because it is uncontrollable, unpredictable and unstoppable. Murakami uses this violence to steep the reader into the lives of his characters and to emphasize how each suffers differently from an other. Furthermore, we find suffering in the context and the aftermath of war.  The Manchurian war has a lasting effect on the soldiers that fought in it. It is portrayed as another type of violence and pain. Lieutenant Mamiya, is forever cursed by the events of the war and his personal experiences. He continues to feel a constant void in his life and is frustrated by his inability to die, regardless of the horrifying conditions he has endured. Violence surrounds every character and is omnipresent in the novel. Descriptions such as that of a man being skinned alive by Mongol bandits who then finish the event by talking about skinning techniques are shocking for the reader. By including unconventional violence through out the novel, Murakami emphasizes its omnipresence in human experience.

From Kenza: Parallels - Creta and Kumiko

Throughout Book 2 Murakami makes us believe that there is a definitive connection between Creta Kano and Kumiko. Although expressed differently, Murakami focuses on the pain felt by both characters. Kumiko undergoes inner damage that she is unable to confess to Toru, her husband. This agony is revealed through flashbacks when Toru recalls certain events in the first six years of their marriage, especially in relation to the abortion, and Kumiko's inability to express her sentiments or explain what she is struggling with. Creta Kano also experiences tremendous pain. Creta Kano's pain is described differently. She undergoes three stages of intense physical pain but unlike Kumiko, Creta succeeds in finding herself close to the final stage of pain. The parallel created between Creta Kano and Kumiko is best noticed through Toru's point of view during his supernatural dreams which he discovers, were controlled by Creta. Creta slowly impersonates Kumiko as she becomes more present during Toru's life at the same time Kumiko and Toru's marriage starts to fall apart and the distance between them becomes more evident. Toru also experiences a change in his inner self and his daily routines. He strives to create his identity and constantly searches for himself. Toru then becomes less mundane and crosses the line between reality and the supernatural partly because of Creta's growing presence in his life. Kumiko, May Kasahara and Creta are the women who seem to effect Toru's life the most. However, Kumiko and Creta's combined effect on the protagonist's life is profound and because of this Toru seems to find himself on another level that defies normality as we know it.

I believe this a scene from a play of the wind up bird chronicle, I found it really interesting how the well looks like an eye from below. It looked like a spiritual reference since Toru is down the well in search for answers, seemed like he was soul searching. But of course we all know the light is the open part of the well. My question is:
Who is the other character beside him?
Is she with him in the well? or is it a flashback?

From Kenza: Life Like a Dream

I agree when you state that in the novel there is a thin line between dream and reality. Murakami gives the impression that most of the novel takes place as much in reality and the actual events of daily life as well as in the dreams. Furthermore, Murakami reveals much more details about his characters during their dreams. When Lieutenant Mamiya shares his fascinating story to Toru and states, "Life went by as a dream" (133) The idea behind this phrase also conveys the emptiness of Lieutenant Mamiya's life after he discovers he is "unable to die." Lieutenant Mamiya gives us the impression that he "dragged" himself through life and that is was a never ending dream even though he risked his life numerous times. When Toru decides to go into the well Murakami uses flashbacks to Toru's previous life to reveal other aspects of Kumiko as well Toru. The numerous references to dreams and dream-like situations is a recurring motif that reveal other sides to each character in the novel.

May Kashara's Squirrel Allusion

"Maybe I hit my head in the accident, and the position of my brain got messed up. Or maybe the psychological shock of it started me covering up all kinds of memories, the way a squirrel hides a nut and forgets where he's buried it. (have you ever seen that happen, Mr. Wind-up Bird? I have. When I was little. I though the stupid squirrel was sooo funny! It never occurred to me the same thing was going to happen to me." (page 462)
This passage is an extract from one of May's letters to Toru Okada. She questions her decision of going to a wig company and is unable to find a sustainable answer. The allusion to the squirrel forgetting where he has hidden a nut is actually similar to many human beings. We sometimes do things without truly knowing why we are doing it. I think that Toru Okada is somewhat concerned by this topic because it would almost seem as though his daily activities have no definite or explicit purpose. He no longer has a job, his wife has left him, he is on a search for something unknown to him and the events in his life are all extremely confusing.
This equally reminds me of May's speech about death. She mentioned that without death, life would not be deep anymore because we would not have to think about these philosophical questions about the after life or what the purpose of life is. It would seem that the squirrel epitomizes this. It cannot remember the location of an item that is of significant importance to it. If we were to ponder deeply about the true purpose of all of our actions, I am quite sure that the answer would not come very quickly. 

Life as a Revolving Door (Book 3)

In the third and final section of this novel, Nutmeg tells Toru Okada about the opera The Magic Flute because she asked him where he thought he would be saving Kumiko from. All that Toru was able to answer to this was, "Somewhere far away." (page 406) It is evident that he does not know anything about Kumiko's precise situation and even less about where she is yet he is determined that his duty is to save her from wherever she finds herself. Nutmeg mentions a conflict between "the land of night" and "the land of day" in the opera which is a parallel to Toru's situation with Kumiko. She has utterly disappeared from his life as though she were now living in an unknown world. On page 411, Nutmeg is telling Toru Okada about the massacre of the animals in the zoo during the war. After the soldiers had finished all of the killings, Nutmeg's father is taken by an overwhelming calmness and an interesting thought comes to his mind, "Maybe the world was like a revolving door, it occurred to him as his consciousness was fading away. And which section you ended up in was just a matter of where your foot happened to fall. There were tigers in one section, but no tigers in another. Maybe it was as simple as taht. And there was no logical continuity from one section to another." (page 411) This passage reminds me of the two worlds that Nutmeg was discussing in the opera. I love this image of the revolving door because it is true that some revolving doors move very fast and that it is difficult to have complete control over them. This correlates with the perception section in TOK and the article entitled "In the Mind's Eye" where the author suggested that there were other dimensions that we were incapable of seeing. If one were to follow Murikami's logic in this particular case, then everything is based on pure coincidence: you are not able of predicting which world you will fall into. Will it be the one with the tigers or the one without them?