Kafka on the Storm
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| Face of a person or a cat? The picture on the cover carefully represents an aspect of the novel's story. |
The world of surrealism that Murakami describes is of course still
interesting, full of surprises. His magical realism always manages to throw us
off into another world, carried away into loose imaginations. The characters
experience a lot of suffering, loneliness, sexual adventures, crises, and
happiness. However, some things seem to repeat from novel to novel, like Murakami is recycling some of the
storytelling devices in his novels.
In Kafka on the Shore, Murakami describes two parallel
journeys across time and space. The first plot is from the point of view of
Kafka Tamura, a fifteen year old teenager who runaway from his father's house. Determined to
avoid Oedipus's curse that his father predicted. However, like Oedipus, the
more he tries to evade his fate, the closer he gets to its fulfillment.
The second plot is from the point of view of Nakata, an illiterate
old man with mental disorders due to a war incident in his childhood, who has
the ability to talk with cats. The story lines of the two of them are neatly
connected, but Murakami ensures that we are never completely sure how the two
are connected.
Kafka's story line is told in odd chapters from a first-person
perspective, while the even chapters use a third-person perspective from inside
Nakata's head and, later added by Hoshino, the young man who became Nakata's
travel companion. This way of telling stories from two different points of view alternately in each chapter is also used in the three-volume novel 1Q84, which
changes between Aomame and Tengo in the first two volumes.
Murakami has written many novels about tough and disillusioned
youths, and Kafka is no exception. He wants to be “the world's thoughest 15-year-old,” full of anger and dissatisfaction with his family, for his fate.
He has an alter ego named Crow, a voice that advises and doubts his decisions,
talking to him in his solitude. Kafka's teenage irritation, aggressiveness and
curiosity led him to events that required courage and experiences beyond what
was normal for his age.
If Kafka is the raging ego in this book, the older Nagata is the
more awkward character. Unable to communicate naturally with humans, but he can
understand cat language. During one of his journeys in search of lost cats, he
fights a man who kills cats to gather their souls, which immediately reminds us
of air chrysalis in 1Q84. The scene of the decapitation of the cats was
depicted in quite detail and was sickening, making me annoyed and forced to
pause for a while before continuing to read.
Nakata's storyline is much more surreal than Kafka's. In the world of Nakata, there is a rain of sardines and leeches falling from the sky, the appearance of characters with the brand name Johnnie Walker to Colonel Sanders. Yet Nakata possessed unwavering dignity and composure. The two storylines slowly lead to a pleasant meeting point, despite the difficulties that confront them.
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| In Murakami's novels there are almost always cats |
Murakami may have had his own beliefs about thunderstorms as
nature's way of communicating the shaking events that determine the fate of the
main characters in the story. As in 1Q84, in Kafka On the Shore
there was also a thunderstorm with striking lightning which was the setting for
an event that returned the course to its proper path. Storms are the turning
point of fate. As he put it through Crow:
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing direction. Once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through. . . . But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in."
In Murakami's novels there are almost always cats, detailed eating and cooking activities, dimly-lit bars playing pop or classical
music that connect our character to the surreal zone that helps him continue
his quest to find what is missing. In these intermediate scenes there is often
interesting dialogue with inserted references to history, music, literature,
philosophy.
In this novel, we get a short summary of Genji Monogatari to
dispel Kafka’s anxiety about ghosts, the historical context of the Spanish
Civil War while enjoying an omelette, a conversation about Hegel's and
Rousseau's philosophy in the middle of a fellatio service, the life story of
Beethoven and Haydn in a coffee shop chat.
Although Murakami recycles many storytelling devices and his
surreal worlds starts to have many similarities in each novel, his skill at making references
that connect them all together with our factual reality, giving his stories an
unwavering charm. If the next Murakami novel is released, we might be able to guess what to
expect, but we can still hope for an exciting novelty through its fresh
metaphors, smart dialogues, and unique phrases, if the plot doesn't excite so much.
Versi Indonesia
"When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in." Well written, clear and deep.
BalasHapusOne of many Murakami’s quotable expression in this book. Thanks for reading 😊
Hapus