There was a certain theme in the last few scenes of Book Two which caught my attention, although it really only involved May Kasahara speaking about death. When Toru was down in the well and she found him, she told him, "You might die down there, depending on my mood. I'm the only one who knows you're in there, and I'm the one who hid the rope ladder... If I just walked away from here, you'd end up dead..." (p.254) When Toru (and the reader) realizes this, he doesn't seem too concerned, because he doesn't really believe May would do something like that, although she is right, and his life depends on her. She seems so enthusiastic about the fact that it is so easy for her to leave him there to die, and this seems weird. How she feels about having a life depend on her. Then Murakami changes the tone of the scene and May becomes a scarier character; "I'm not talking about possibility," she said in the coldest tone imaginable. "Hey, I've got an idea... You went to all this trouble of climbing down there so you could think. Why don't I fix it so you can concentrate on your thoughts even better?" (p.255) And then she closes the cover of the well completely. This ends the chapter on the eeriest note possible, because she'd just been talking about leaving Toru there to die, and closing the well completely makes her words become more believable.
But May seems to be very interested in death. She researches about how long it would take for someone to die of hunger or thirst, and predicts how long Toru has to live if she leaves him there. There's a quote that she says that I really liked, because I'd never thought about it before, "If people lived forever - if they never got any older - if they could just go on living in this world, never dying, always healthy - do you think they'd bother to think hard about things, the way we're doing now? I mean, we think about just about everything, more or less... I kinda think, if there were no such thing as death, that complicated thoughts and ideas like that would never come into the world." (p.258) It's a very interesting idea, especially because I agree; if we were immortal, we would probably never think about such complicated things, because we wouldn't care, we wouldn't have to. As May says later on, "Or even if they should bother, they'd probably just figure, 'Oh well, I've got plenty of time for that. I'll think about it later.' But we can't wait until later." (p.258) These are Murakami's ideas transmitted through May's character, and they impact the reader, especially because death is a prominent idea in the book right now, since Toru is trapped in a well with no food and little water.
Later in the novel we find out why May is so fixated on death, but it's true that she is quite scarey at times. She gives the impression that she does not have the limits that saner people have - that her curiosity might make her cross lines others would not. In book 3 she threatens suicide to her parents and cites three very specific ways in which she would kill herself - one of which would be to stuff tampons down her throat and drink loads of water. This struck me as extraordinarily vivid and not funny at all.
ReplyDeleteI still like her though - probably because she is not afraid to ask hard questions, and she actually thinks about life in a way most of us probably do not. She seems gutsy, troubled and rebellious; all attractive traits. (Certainly I much prefer her to Malta and Creta who I don't find convincing or even very interesting.)
As to your quote, Arrito, I noticed it too! It jumped off the page at me because it is so extraordinarily insightful. She (via Murakami) is exactly right! Were it not for the certainty of our eventual extinction (who knows when or where) we might never "think hard" about things, or achieve much in life. Have you noticed how writers, artists, scientists etc. start working more frantically as their life span begins to tail off into old age? It's as though they know there cannot be much time left, and so must get a move on. Pursuing pleasure - or money - or happiness is less important than finding your life's purpose or meaning.
May really does seem to be almost obsessed with death. I think that this begins at the death of her male friend, that she (basically) killed, by covering his eyes on a motorcycle. Then there is also when, as you just mentioned, she leaves Toru there in the well. She knows very well that she is the only one aware of his location and unless she "feels" like it, he could probably be left there to die, and nobody would even suspect her. To be honest, the fact that this thought would even cross his mind is just scary. Also, as Mrs.Mkinsi just mentioned, the letters where she is threatening to commit suicide. Even if I did want to commit suicide, there is no way that i would ever come up with such a way to do so. I just find it plain weird that she would ever think of stuffing tampons down her throat and having them expand as she drinks water. Weird and alarming.
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