Saeki’s Love For Her Sweetheart

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1. Saeki’s Love For Her Sweetheart

When Saeki was a little girl, she has a close friend. Her friend is from Komura family. Their relationship is between a little boy and a girl. Both of them have an affection feeling which is called love. According to May 1969b, this kind of love is philia, that is, an intimate nonsexual friendship between two people. It is because when they were a child, the relationship was between playmates. They are close each other but their intimacy do not involve a sexual desire. “When she was still in grade school she had a sweetheart. The eldest son of Komura family- a distant relative, actually. They were the same age and made a handsome couple, a regular Romeo and Juliet. They lived near each other and were never apart. And when they became adults they fell in love. They were like one body and spirit, according to my mother.” p.165 Oshima, Saeki’s assistant in Komura Memorial Library tells Kafka about Saeki’s past. He clearly describes how Saeki’s relationship with her sweetheart. When they were adults, they fell in love. The love which existed in their relationship was not a relationship between playmates or a love for a best friend. Saeki’s love for her sweetheart is a love for a lover. When she was fourteen, she had a sexual intercourse with her sweetheart. This kind of love is called as Eros, according to May 1969b Eros is psychological desire that seek procreation or creation through an enduring union with a loved one, Eros is making love; sex is manipulating organ as cited in Feist Feist, 2006, 353. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 42 Saeki’s relationship with her sweetheart is very beautiful as if both of them are fated together. The memories with the boy are very meaningful for her. One memory that is so meaningful that she kept in her heart was the moment when they were in a shore near to Komura Private Memorial Library. …she points to a spot on the shoreline. “It was right over there,” she says. “He painted that spot from here. He put the deck chair over there, had the boy pose in it, and set up his easel right around here. I remember it well p.310. It was the memory she had with her sweetheart forty years ago. However, she remembers all details about it. Her boy friend likes to paint. At that time, she accompanies him to paint on the shore. He paints a boy, maybe in his twelve or so, who is wearing a white sunhat and sitting on a small deck chair. His elbow’s on one of the arms of the chair, his chin resting in is hand. He looks a little sad, but kind of pleased too. A black German shepherd sits next to the boy, like he’s guarding him. In the background is the sea and a couple of other people, but they’re too far away to make out their faces. A small island’s visible, and a few first shaped cloud float over the water. p.182 It is the detail of the painting of Saeki’s sweetheart. Forty years is not a short time, definitely the spot is changed completely. However she remembers it well. Saeki’s happiness of being with the boy is changed because the boy moves to Tokyo in order to continue his college. Saeki want to go to Tokyo, but her parents do not allow her. Her parents are conservative and old-fashioned. Since then, they are having a PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 43 long distance relationship for the first time. They communicate through a letter. Saeki’s sweetheart thinks that to live apart tell them how much they are meaningful to each other, but Saeki does not. She cannot live apart from her sweetheart. She thinks that their relationship is real enough so that they did not have to live apart. However, her sweetheart went to Tokyo. Saeki was lonely. “When she was nineteen Miss Saeki wrote a poem, set it to music, and played the piano and sang it. It was a melancholy melody, innocent, and lovely. The lyrics, on the hand, were symbolic, contemplative, and hard to figure it out. The contrast gave the song a kind of spirit and immediacy. “p.166. Since she is a melancholic and artistic person, she expresses her feeling by writing a poem, set it to music and plays the piano and sings it. The lyric reveals emptiness in her heart. You sit at the edge of the world I am in a crater that’s no more Words without letters Standing in the shadow of the door The moon shines down a sleeping lizard Little fish rain down from the sky Outside the window there are soldiers Steeling themselves to die Kafka sits in a chair by the shore Thinking of the pendulum that moves the world, it seems. When your heart is closed, The shadow of the unmoving Sphinx, Becomes a knife that pierces your dreams The drowning girl’s fingers Search for the entrance stone, and more Lifting the hem of her azure dress, She gazes- At Kafka on the shore p.238 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 44 The lyrics of the song reveals Saeki’s cry to her sweetheart who is so far away. Living far away from the one she really loved was not easy. The name of Kafka in the lyric is the name of a boy who was painted by Saeki’s sweetheart. Her sweetheart gives the title of his painting Kafka on the shore. She sings many times in front of people. Since the lyric of the song reveals her true feeling, Saeki sings it with the voice from her heart. People who listen to the music may be drowned deeply in the music. Furthermore, someone records the song and sends it to a friend in Tokyo. Then Saeki can go to Tokyo to have a recording. Unfortunately, Saeki’s sweetheart was died when he was twenty. He is unconsciously murdered. At that time, his college was on strike. When he wants to bring food to his friend who is manning the barricades before ten one night. The students who are occupying the building mistake him for a leader of an opposing faction- he did resemble him a lot- and grab him, tie him to a chair, and interrogate him as a spy p.168. With such condition, he can not survive and finally died. The death leaves a deep sorrow for Saeki. Her love for her sweetheart is so deep that she cannot live without him. Saeki’s world stopped since the death. She never sings again. She drops from college, refuses to talk with other people including her parents, and no one knows where she hides after the death of her sweetheart. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 45 “...Rumors flew that she’d been committed to a mental hospital after a failed suicide attempt in deep forests surrounding Mount Fuji. Others said a friend of a friend had spotted on the streets of Tokyo. According to this person she was working in Tokyo as a writer or something. Other rumors had it she was married and had a child.168” This is the statement said by Oshima. He tells Kafka about Saeki. Oshima knows the story well because Oshima’s mother was Saeki’s friend. There are many rumors about Saeki. As said by Oshima, she had been committed a mental hospital, worked in Tokyo as a writer, and married and had a child. However, there is no an absolute answer about that. Saeki is a very mysterious woman. This world is small, but she can hides from the society to bury herself in to long sorrow. Twenty years after the death of her sweetheart, she reappeared in Takamatsu. She talks with Komura family and becomes the head of the library. The library is very important to Saeki because her sweetheart used to live there. The building of the library is separated from the main building of his house. Almost every day she went to see her sweetheart. “… The two of them studied together, listened to music, and talked forever.170” Being together with a beloved someone everyday is like building a land in the paradise, no one’s comes to disturb their happiness. Perhaps at that place they made love. They were adolescents and loved each other. As As Alberoni n,d states that a person in love sees everything transfigured-nature, the air, rivers, light, colors are all brighter and more intense p.11. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 46 Saeki finds happiness in the library because her sweetheart’s spirit is in the library. That is the reason why Saeki reappears and becomes the head of Komura Private Memorial Library, the place where she and her sweetheart spend their happy moment. Since the death of her sweetheart, her life is completely changed. Furthermore, she hates herself and does not accept the reality. The refusal of what is occurring in her life makes her living in an imagination life. Saeki’s life is becoming very dark, because her sweetheart is like a light for her. When the light has extinguished, she becomes slowly overcast and waits to be extinguished too. Saeki’s wish to live in a world which has no time comes true. One day there was a man who came to the library and talked to Saeki. He is Nakata, an old man who was an old man who lost his memory because of a mysterious occurrence that happened when he was an elementary school student. Nakata became “empty”, even he couldn’t read. However, Nakata could talk to cats and predict thunder and leeches and fishes rain from the sky Saeki does not know who he is, but it seems that they have known each other. Saeki gives him thick file folders to the man. “I’ve been writing this, a record of my life” p.410. She asked the man to burn it all. When Saeki gives the record of her life, it means that she has escaped her long sorrow, hatred, loneliness. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 47 She let the burden in her heart to vanish. It is because a record of someone’s life is a symbol of happiness, laugh, cry, anger, hatred, problems of the owner of the record. Saeki is willing to cover her past and start a new life. Unfortunately, the new life of Saeki is a life in a world without time. Thus, based on the analysis above, the writer finds that Saeki’s love is borderless. Saeki’s love cannot be separated by a space and time.

2. Saeki’s Love For Kafka, Her Abandoned Son