I have read Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and I feel that I understood the general themes. losing friendship because you develop sexual feelings I also read Norwegian Wood, I didn't like it as much as Colorless Tsukuru but again I felt like I understood the themes. loneliness in middle age and nostalgia of youth
However, I'm at loss with Kafka and I feel like I really didn't get what it's about. Why on Earth did that guy need to kill his father and sleep with his own mother? I'm aware of the story of Oedipus but I just don't get it. And what's up with the stone and rest of the weird stuff?
by Ok-Archer-5796
3 Comments
I read it a few years ago so I don’t recall much. But I do remember the general plot being Kafka’s coming of age story. It involved him getting away from/out of his father’s shadow. There was a great passage about life(life is a storm…).
Often, with Murakami, you just have to float along on the tide, rather than try to understand anything literally. A lot of his writing is as much “mood poetry” as it is an actual story.
Why do you think you have to “get it”? Sometimes there are just words, that create some images or prose. Raining fish can mean something or nothing at all, it doesn’t have to have a meaning or an explanation. If you find one, that’s great. But if you don’t, you can take it as an weird image and that can be all there is to it. You’re not reading it wrong either way.