About the writer (partly extract from Kafka on the shore)

Haruki Murakami, a famous Japanese novelist, was born in Kyoto in 1949. His work, which includes after the quake, Dance Dance Dance, The Elephant Vanishes, and Norwegian Wood, has been translated into 34 languages, and the most recent of his honors is the Yomiuri Literary Prize, whose previous recipients include Yukio Mishima and Kobo Abe.

Plot summary

This book is divided into two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between the two, taking up each plotline in alternating chapters. The odd chapters mainly tell a story about a boy named Kafka, who lives with his father in Tokyo, Japan. Kafka’s mother abandoned him in his early ages and went away with his sister. What’s more, Kafka is predicted by his father that he will one day kill his own father and make love with his mother and sister. In order to escape this oedipal curse and to embark upon a quest to find his mother and sister, Kafka escaped from his hometown and went to Takamatsu. He wants to become “the toughest fifteen-year-old in the world. And he finds shelter in a quiet library, where he meets Oshima, a haemophiliac, and Miss Saeki, the manager of the library. Kafka read a lot of books in that library until the police begin inquiring after him in connection with a brutal murder.

The even chapters mainly involves Nakata’s story, which is much more outlandish than the story of Kafka’s. Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction, lost his memory and intellectual functions accidentally. In their place, Nakata obtained the ability to communicate with cats. He killed Kafka’s father by mistake, and thus, is drawn toward Kafka.

My food for thoughts

What does the 15-year-old mean?

-----------The meaning of painful growth

Kafka on the shore is a novel written by famous Japanese author Haruki Murakami and is translated into English by Phillip Gabriel. What I have read is its English version. The moment I start to read the story of Kafka on the shore, I fall in love with this fantastic novel.

Kafka and Nakata are on a collision course throughout the novel, but their convergence takes place as much on a metaphysical plane as it does in reality and, in fact, that can be said of the novel itself. For me, I prefer the story of Kafka’s adventures, which has struck a responsive chord in my heart and made me think more.

As I have just experienced my fifteen-year–old period in my life, I found myself have a lot of same feelings with Kafka. For instance, Kafka has the desire to escape the school and become totally free, the fear and curiosity to the world of adults, and also, the thirsty for isomerism. And all of these feeling also occur to me. Kafka wander in the maze of dreams and reality, so did I .Maybe it’s a permanent question that how to face the inevitable problems and confusions when we are experiencing the adolescent age.

In the novel, Kafka chooses to escape from the reality. He left school and become a queer student in other’s eyes. In my eye, he is actually a tall, well-built and intellectual boy. Judging from what he said and what he done during his dream-like adventures, I just think he is full of wisdom and much more mature than any boy of fifteen. However, he was born in a family of miseries where his own mother left him almost before he became conscious of them. He is extremely lonely, even start to create an inexistent shadow of himself. We can’t deny that we all felt a bit lonely when we are fifteen years old, can we? Yes it may be called the costs of growth. The first thing we got when we are experiencing our fifteen-year-old period is not true freedom but painful loneliness, which our mind and body have to bear it all. All by ourselves.

Kafka’s father is a famous but strange sculptor. He always does some rather strange things and finally made Kafka’s mother’s leaving home. Maybe it’s the first time Kafka start to hate the adults. He is too young to face up to the cruel world of adults. However, he has to take his own responsibility of growing and face up all the difficulties alone, for it’s the toughest fifteen-year-old he wants. Then I start to wander where does our responsibility begin? Wiping away the nebula from our sight, we struggle to find where we really are. We’re trying to find the direction of flow, struggling to hold on to the axis of time. But we all will become confused and desperate when facing the problems of growth. We are eager to have our own freedom and our own love but at the same time, we hate the people and the environment around us and refuse to take our own responsibility. And it’s true--all our life is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom. Even Oedipus won’t get the answer to this paradox.

Another agony of the fifteen-year-old in our life is the huge gulf between dreams and reality. Kafka’s dream in his fifteen is to find his long-missing mother and sister, to triumph over that oedipal curse, to become the toughest fifteen-year-old in the world. What is our dream at that time? Maybe we want to earn countless money. Maybe we want to be a teacher, a president, an astronaut or anyone else. But what is the reality? The reality is like high, strong fences only allow the best person to pass through. When trying to pass through those fences, we tend to lose our initial dreams and confidence. As Miss Saeki says in the book that, “I had something too complete, too perfect, once, and afterwards all I could do was despise myself.” In this sorrowful process, we can’t locate the borderline separating dream and reality. Or even the boundary between what’s real and what’s possible, which are the main causes of our strikes in our youth, I think.

So we all have suffered the pain of our growth, don’t we? Loneliness, fears, confusions and disillusions are irresistible in that certain fifteen-year-old. But what I have learned from the novel Kafka on the shore is that if we never lose our hope and desire to look forward, just like what Kafka did, we will all be able to go through our toughest periods at anytime in life. The metaphorical ending of this novel is that Kafka finally tided over all the difficulties in his toughest fifteen years old. He went back to his home and lived as usual as before. What’s more, he became more mature, sensible and responsible. Just as the author Haruki describes Kafka---You finally fall asleep. And when you wake up, it’s true that you are part of a brand-new world. Yes it’s true. You see, we even went through our toughest fifteen-year-old which is full of affliction, what difficulties can’t we defeat? Through growth, however painful it is, we can gain the ability to accept this world in a placid way. It is our realization of the difference between the dreams and reality that urges us to make Herculean efforts.  Cherish everything in our life ---- let the window become my heart’s window, the door my soul’s door. Actually we can go through everything.

Hard to deny, this novel still has lots of unknown things to me, as its author once said that Kafka on the shore contains several riddles and there aren’t any solutions provided. It talks about music, redemptive metaphors, the virtues of self-sufficiency and efficiency, the uncertain grip of prophecy, the power of nature and so on. But, I have already gained a lot about life and youth from reading this wonderful novel. Famous American poet, humanitarian Samuel Ullman once said, “In the center of your and my heart there is a wireless station: so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.”  And I want to use these famous words to end my book report. I think youth is both painful and meaningful. It’s the certain time for us to build our wireless station, without which our spirit will be covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism. And it’s just the true meaning of our painful growth.