35 Therefore, the brain will produce the tension for everything needed
by the body. The tension will cause a depressed feeling by the body. That is why human have to reduce the feeling by finding the way out.
Therefore, Saeki’s way to reduce the unpleasant feeling of loosing her sweetheart indirectly builds her mysterious character.
Even now she’s slim and beautiful and has the same neat, smart look you see on the record jacket of “Kafka on the Shore.” But there’s one thing
missing: that lovely, innocent smile, but it’s always limited somehow, a smile that never goes beyond the moment 169.
The quotation above is the conversation between Kafka and Oshima. Oshima tells Kafka about Saeki. The death of her sweetheart has really
influenced Saeki’s personality. She smiles but she never smiles from her heart. Saeki’s life is really mysterious. People tend to guess her life than to
ask her directly. She keeps her sadness, love, resentment, only for herself. She does not have a best friend to share her feeling. She lives with her
own way.
d. Faithful
Saeki is a faithful woman because she is loyal to her sweetheart over a long period of time. Saeki and her sweetheart were like a Romeo and
Juliet who were never been apart until the boy eighteen. Saeki’s sweetheart continued her study in Tokyo. They had a long distant relationship.
However, she remained faithful. She only had one love, and the love was given to her sweetheart.
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36 Murphy, in Understanding Unseen 1972 mentions conversation by
others can reflect somebody’s character. The following is a conversation by Oshima and Kafka when they talked about Saeki. “Neither one of them
had ever been attracted to anyone else. Even they were apart, no one could ever come between them” 166. From the quotation above, the writer
infers that Saeki is a faithful woman.
e. Melancholic
Melancholic refers to very sad; depressed “Melancholic”. Saeki can be said as a melancholic woman because the death of her sweetheart
leaves a sorrow and a deep sadness for more than twenty years which influences her entire life.
“My life ended at age of twenty. Since then it’s been merely a series of endless reminiscence, a dark, winding corridor leading nowhere.
Nevertheless, I had to live it, surviving each empty day, seeing each day off still empty. During those days I made a lot of mistakes. No, that’s not
correct- sometimes I feel that all I did was make mistakes. I felt like I was living at the bottom of a deep well, completely shut up inside myself….”
410
The quotation above indicates that metaphorically she dead with her sweetheart. Her heart is still breathing, but she lives without the willing to
live. She finds that every day is empty and meaningless. What has been buried in Saeki’s heart and mind is only long sadness
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37
f. Artistic
Artistic refers to having or showing natural skill in the arts, eg painting, music or dance “Artistic”. Saeki is an artistic woman. She
expresses her feeling by writing a poem. She is able to set the poem into music and sing it. The poem of Kafka on the Shore is her poem which was
written to express the feeling of losing her sweetheart. Besides, she can play a piano. As what Oshima said to Kafka:
“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. “
166
g. A loner
