The Return of NW the cat

This novel is full of symbols, and so I felt that when the cat returned it was a "sign" perhaps that the interrupted flow was going to begin "flowing" again. The cat's disappearance was the first bizarre event  that was discussed in the novel; it can be seen as the trigger of the chain of bizarre events that occurred after. Therefore, the fact that the cat returned, after a year, is once again a strange and inexplicable coincidence. Toru also chose to change the name of his pet which can also be interpreted as a transition in his life. 

From Siham: (Kumiko’s Letter): Impressions

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle # 17

Kumiko’s letter is quite a revelation as there were hints throughout the book of suspicion concerning her real intentions in leaving Toru. Her last letter conveys another Kumiko that is more vulnerable and reckless, since she is ready to kill her brother. It appears as a shock when she reveals that Noboru has abused her, which explains why she left, as she was trapped and manipulated by him. Noboru’s power over women is conveyed through the similarities between Creta Kano and Kumiko, “ I did not sleep with just one man. I slept with many other men. Too many too count. I myself have no idea what caused me to do such a thing. Looking back upon it now, I think it may have been my brother’s influence.” (602) It feels like Noburu triggers the worst inner instincts in them, and exposes them to the outer world, as both Creta and Kumiko feel the need to sleep with other men with no control over their own bodies. There is this numbness and feeling of darkness that is recurrent when they talk about their experience, as if they were trapped in the dark room 208 and could not escape Noboru’s control, unless someone went to save them.

Also, Mackerel could be compared to Kumiko as he left the house, but at the end found his way back to Toru; like Kumiko who confessed the truth about her brother to be issued from him. In a sense it is an accomplishment for Toru since his efforts were not meaningless and helped Kumiko hold on to the bit of hope she still had of stopping Noboru by killing him, even if it meant going to prison. Kumiko’s rejection was in fact not dictated not by her own feelings, but by the feeling of hatred that Noboru had, since he viewed Toru as the man that stole his sister and wanted to get her back by any malevolent means.

From Siham: Toru's Character

At the end of the novel, we can see that Toru’s character grew more complex through Murakami’s surrealistic descriptions, which convey a Toru with more than one personality. As soon as he meets Nutmeg, it’s a turning point for him as we can remark when he goes for the first time in her office and observes his worn out shoes, “ I felt with new intensity just how alone I was, just how far the world had left me behind. It was time for me to buy a new pair of shoes, I told myself. “ (365) The shoes are a symbol of Toru’s old life and how a change is needed for him in order to move forward.

 Murakami also compares him to a vacant house, “I struggled to superimpose my own image upon that of a vacant house. I thought of myself as a pillar, a wall, a ceiling, a floor, a window, a door, a stone.” (368) The imagery reflects Toru’s character in the way that he has been abandoned and has this emptiness within him that Murakami wants to emphasize.

There is a constant detachment too from normal people that is exhibited, as if Toru could simply not enter society and go back to the peaceful and quiet life he had before. He is so unaccustomed to the real world, that even newspapers appear to him as strange and empty. It seems that he only feels comfortable in an unreal setting like the fitting room for instance.

This detachment is also reflected in the confusion between the reality and his “dream”, as if he was torn apart between two different selves trying to separate. I think his dreams reflect what he wants to do in the real world, for example beating up Noboru Wataya with a baseball bat, “ Perhaps, up there, in the real world, I had actually struck him with the bat and injured him severely, and I was the only one who didn’t know about it.” (571) One part of him is trying to repress what his real emotions are and another part is a confusion of negative emotions of hatred and violence that cannot be suppressed. I also noticed that the actions he had in this other world had an impact on the real world, as after beating up Noboru, it was later told to us that he had a stroke in his way to a conference.

There is an obvious change of character in Toru, as he now takes action and has this fearless determination to have Kumiko back and is willing to risk his life because he knew it was his last chance. Even though, Toru struggles most of the book and fights for a cause that we thought of as hopeless, I think Kumiko leaving the house has taught him to never give up through all his unusual experiences, since the ending proves to be a revelation in reconnecting with her and saving her from Noboru’s abusive world.

From Siham (On The Portrayal of Women)

Murakami portrays women throughout the book as determined and independent, which contrasts with Toru’s character since he appears to be ambitionless in comparison to them. In the beginning of the book, we can already notice that Kumiko is an empowered woman since she cares for Toru financially and does not need to rely on him for anything. It almost feels like the roles are reversed since Toru finds a kind of escape from his boring reality in cooking and doing laundry like a traditional housewife and Kumiko finds her escape from Toru in her work and late hours to spend less time at home. Later in the book when Kumiko leaves the house, even if it was somewhat predictable since we knew that their marriage was not going well, it is a shock to know that Kumiko is not coming back and knew exactly what she was doing by leaving with that much determination. We can sense it in her letter to Toru afterwards, “ I have only one thing to ask you, and that is this: please don’t concern yourself about me anymore. Please don’t try to find me. Just forget about me and think about beginning a new life.” (277) By admitting that she had an affair, we can see that Kumiko is an honest woman that could not repress the sexual desire she never felt for Toru. Her letter, written in short affirmative sentences with no hesitation, shows how strong her character is, which leaves Toru powerless and dubious about what her real intentions were in leaving him.

Another strong female character later in the book is Nutmeg Akasaka and her impeccable physique, since she dresses perfectly which gives this kind of untouchable aura and her certainty about Toru’s “supernatural” power. It is not coincidental that Toru saw Nutmeg twice in an interval of a year, but I think Murakami wanted to exhibit the difference in the character of Toru in the second book in comparison to the third book. We can see that change because of Nutmeg; he is transformed and she gives him the outlet for the ambition that he lacked in the first and second book. In chapter 20: “Nutmeg’s story”, the summary of Nutmeg’s life is eye-opening giving us a more global comprehension of her character, since she came from a poor social background, but from an early age she already had this determination to be successful, “What she wanted more than anything was to learn a useful skill and make herself independent as soon as possible. She was in a place far away from her classmates and their comfortable enjoyment of high school life.” (471) Her passion for fashion and dedication to her work made her who she is, at the expense of her having human relations and friends. In addition, the fact that she knew that Toru had this “supernatural” power and how he could channel it, makes her character even more intuitive and strong.

Nutmeg’s success can also be reflected through her client list since the women that come to her have this inaccessible barrier with reality, “But around them lingered that special smell produced by a combination of power and money. The women themselves never made a show of it, but Nutmeg could tell from the style and fit of their clothes that they came from backgrounds of privilege.” (456) In a way, Murakami empowers them by that mysteriousness and secrecy, which makes them seem even more powerful. This consistent portrayal of women makes us discover the characters in more depth since we can compare them in order to have a better understanding of the view of women in the book.

From Siham (On Pathetic Fallacy in Book 3)

In the beginning of the third book, I noticed how recurrent Murakami used pathetic fallacy in order to reflect the feelings of Toru Okada as the winter approaches. There is this sense of timelessness that winter brings, as if Okada’s life was frozen since he does not get any calls and is trapped in his home in the torment of his own loneliness. I noticed that during the winter the wind up bird was not described, as if everyone wanted to avoid Toru’s solitary path. Moreover, the diction is stiff and the weather is emphasized by the repetitive use of unpleasant feelings like being cold, “The winter was a cold one, but I sometimes forgot to turn on the heat, unsure whether the cold was real or just something inside me. I would throw the switch only after a look at the thermometer had convinced me that it really was cold, but even so, the cold did not diminish”. (345) By that cold atmosphere, we can feel Toru is ill, being as he is trying to distance himself from his own reality since he knows the life he is currently living is based on the past, and the grief of Kumiko’s absence. On the other hand, when the spring comes it feels like Toru is given his life back as if it was his opportunity for a new start, “February came to an end, and March was half gone when the freezing cold began to relent somewhat. Warm winds blew up from the south. Buds appeared on the trees, and the new birds showed up in the garden.”(350) It feels like the spring announces the beginning of a summer full of new opportunities and encounters for Toru, since he now has the determination to work in order to buy the Miyawaki house. And by meeting Nutmeg on a hot summer day a year after he saw her for the first time, Murakami wants to reflect how much of a turn Toru’s life will take after all the routineness and normality that is conveyed in the two first books. All in all, Murakami’s pathetic fallacy conveys the changing state of Toru’s life, as he is striving for a change and has to cope with the pain and emptiness of his life by concentrating on his own future.

Lack of distinct character voice

While this novel is excellent in many ways I would also like to acknowledge one point that I found a bit on the down side. This is Murakami’s method of characterization. While this book has gone through translation in order for me as well as the rest of us to be able to read the book what was lost in the process of translation is in question. Several of the characters appeared to have the exactly same ‘voice’; there are several large passages where we are reading a letter or listening to a story told by a character other than our narrator (Mr. Okada) the protagonist, and the syntax remains the same for an elderly war veteran as for a young prostitute. This brings me to my next point, the small issue of all female characters being succubae (in other words a demon woman who has sexual intercourse with sleeping men); they phone Toru to molest his ears, enter his dreams in order to force themselves upon him, they tantalize and frustrate him before threatening his life or else pay hard currency for the privilege of sapping his spiritual energy. Despite their universally famished appetite for Toru’s spunk (in all senses of the word), the female characters only appear to obtain any sexual pleasure during adultery or rape. Leading on from this, there is a big problem with sex, which occurs frequently and takes on a level of spiritual significance. Sex can be a way of getting into somebody’s head and it is a small step to seeing this in spiritual or else supernatural terms, but it surely has to be fairly spectacular intercourse; that kind of inverted torture where a person can be drawn out to the edge of themselves. Unfortunately however, there is nothing about Toru’s many sexual adventures that make them appear above the level of a contact sport. Of course this is all very well for dispassionate Toru, still it becomes a bit boring to read and one begins to suspect all this sex has been put in to prove something. Fortunately though there is one positive force in the shape of Toru’s teenaged neighbor, May Kasahara. While she is yet another blood-sucking temptress she is the funniest, wisest, most realistic and thoroughly loveable character in the book. Still, I wasn’t really wasn’t convinced by his characterizations. Again there is a question mark over what might be lost in translation. What do you guys think? Have noticed anything irregular or disappointing in the book? 

From numbness to sensation

One contrasting view of this novel than the one I’ve proposed is that this is a story about moving from a position of numbness to a position of feeling. At the outset, Toru is completely vacant of passion. He is not worried or excited by this limbo in his career, he isn’t aware of his wife’s increasing absences and whenever anyone wants to see him, he has no plans. His central mission over the course of the novel is not to discover some profound intellectual truth or even a factual explanation of the events that are occurring, but merely to get in touch with how he feels, whether this might be drawn out of him by the stories and behaviors of other people (usually mirroring the same theme) or whether he might go down a well and deprive himself of sustenance and stimulation until that monster, emotion, finally emerges. Toru's world is an alien world where darkness gets encrusted in his soul, tormenting him to no end, driving him to descend to the depths of absolute darkness. When the goes into the well, it symbolizes death with consciousness as he sees that life is better lived in light. This poignant passage is reminiscent of Martin Luther King Jr.'s words: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." Nonetheless while these trips can be rather scary adventures, with a lot of darkness in the book, there’s also a lot of light and perhaps most importantly, a lot of beauty - of both the dark and light as well as the ambiguous variety.

The style of Murakami came across as pretty astonishing; it’s the manner by which he’s able to master both the art of being at once verbose and at other instances minimalist. This irked me at first when reading however despite crossing some complicated phrases and economical sentences, the main reason I read this 607 page book was because the author insisted on rephrasing and the repeating the same account or sentiment three times, after a while I decided that this was part of its genius edifice. It becomes quite amusing altogether. Also some of us might have noticed this while others may have not paid as much attention to the fact that the word weird is utilized more frequently than any other adjective. What I figured out was that this was that one word that allows Murakami to lead us seamlessly backwards and forwards between the real and the surreal. This writing style is definitely one of a kind; it is as though words are associated to certain switches in the book that we should search for as we’re reading.