Kafka on the shore review
Actually the one reason for this book being so popular, the readers can’t get one real concrete idea of this book as they expected. Once they read, then they are addicted to read again and again because they think that miss something and they would have understood a bit more of their second time reading or third time reading and so on. But apparently, the more they read this book, the more they confused. I think this book contain with the combination of both spiritual and corporeal functions. “Kafka on the shore” is widely considered as a metaphysical novel.
When you finish reading this book, it is on your own ideas of interpretation, but not other’s or Haruki Murakami’s idea of interpretation. you can implant your own idea as a conclusion. That’s why German philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche once said, ” there is no such things as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena”. So any one can interpretate the ideas for the book according to his or her own idea of interpretation. That is the beauty of the contents of this book i think.
Throughout this book, the people actually reading many happenings of not just the characters of body but the spiritual function too. This is why the readers get more confused about the role of both body and the spiritual function of Nakata, Saeki, Kafka Tamura, Jonnie Walker, Colonel Sanderson. Even the Japanese sense of spiritualities are added with those characters in this book by the writer Haruki Murakami. Some times they are evil spirituals with magical realism. If explains further more, Kafka Tamura mainly escaped from his father’s strange prophecy, but in real sense of the meaning in this book is, Kafka wanted to escaped from his dad’s prophecy by moving his 15 year old body out of the home, but spiritually Kafka Tamura wanted to fulfill his dad’s curse by fulfilling the prophecy.
Haruki Murakami.
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Haruki Murakami as a Japanese born writer, he played with quite a few narratives in this book, may be unconsciously using his knowledge of Japanese sense of spirituality, specially the body and the soul. They could be based on Shinto religion or Japanese Tattoo culture, or spiritual of Martial Arts culture or Yakuza’s ideology etc…
The message from this book, we can speculate kind of several directions from different perspectives but more of these i think, the writer Murakami means to say how individuals control their own destiny and the missions in which they are continuing by themselves to find the way out. Even in the fate what you are doomed to be, not the one you should carry on within on it but to change according your own practices. As an example, Nakata who was a kind of mentally handicap individual after the forest incident during the second world war time, was doomed to die as a poor and trivial guy but his magical mission, he took over, drive him for a long journey and passing his spiritual inheritance to Oshima to carry on. Finally he ended up being a special character because of he managed to release very young boy from his father’s unusual prophecy. Even the truck driver Hoshino changed a lot after meeting Nakata. Hoshino was able to divert his thinking pattern according to this uneducated old man Nakata. Finally Hoshino obtain the spiritual and magical ability from Nakata to speak with the cats. It is very important the way the writer discuss how Nakata influence Hoshino in to Nakata’s mission through his spiritual personality and the controversial mission.
Murakami’s works
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Mrs. Saeki is the most controversial character in this book according to my reading. She has had a mental scar since her 20 years old boy friend died when she was having love affair with him. She was suffering a lot because of his death and later, the suffer became a kind of mental traumatic scar which can guide her. Her decision of working in the library is also a part of her suffering. When she met Kafka Tamura at the library she mesmerized her past nostalgic suffering and she imagined that Kafka Tamura is the boy she has had an affair with her way back in her younger age. On the other hand, Kafka Tamura began to think that Mrs. Saeki would have been his lost mother. Even when the couple sharing very intimacy occasions in the same room where Mrs. Saeki’s younger boyfriend at that time, used to live. She tried to imagined the roll of Kafka Tamura is pretty much the same as her past boy friend. Actually the companionship between Mrs. Saeki and Kafka Tamura represents their spirit’s relationship rather than their real corporeal relationship because of apparently both were trying to heel their own spiritual traumatic and magical realism. I think the writer Haruki Murakami has very handsomely shuffled those two personals’ dialectical approach.
After meeting Mrs. Saeki and the young girl Sakura, Kafka Tamura has satisfied in two ways. One is that, He unconsciously imagined those two ladies are his mother and sister respectively. Then he would imagine his father’s prophecy could be fulfilled by having them. That is why Kafka Tamura tried to match those ladies as his mother and sister even though he can’t remember their faces since his childhood.
From the beginning of the story, Kafka Tamura is guided by a “crow”. That is a symbolic feature of Kafka to guide the path when ever Kafka is confused or hesitate to do something formidable tasks. But in reality, ” Kafka” means crow in Czech language. In the book of Kafka on the shore using the crow character to advise, warning Kafka whenever he got confused or hesitate to do something. But in this story, Murakami has used the ” crow” concept as an imaginary person who can be intelligent and wiser to advise to the boy. Even in Greek Mythology, crows are connected with Apollo, the God of prophecy. May be Murakami might have found the character of crow for this metaphysical novel to use inner person of 15 years old boy Kafka. Anyway the crow is widely considered as a spiritual messenger.
Anyway the ” Kafka on the shore” is a marvelous story and i think those who loves reading books, better to read and feel the experiences of the all characters of this book.
