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3. NORWEGIAN WOOD NOVEL 1.1 Friendship Story
In this novel Toru Watanabe is a main character. He has a best friend Kizuki. He is so close at the time. Kizuki is a Naoko’s boyfriend, but Kizuki takes
his own life. Watanabe is covered by the missing out on the death of his best friend. Too many memories with him. The death of Kizuki is the one thing that
most difficult for Watanabe. That is the first the loneliness he feels. As follows the memories of his friendship with Kizuki and Naoko.
Watanabe first meets Naoko in the spring of his second year high school. She is also in her second year and attending a refined girl’s high school run by one
of the Christian missions. Naoko is the girlfriend of his best and only friend, Kizuki. The two of them have been close almost from birth, their house not two
hundred yards apart. “As with most couples who have been together since chilhood. There
was a casual openness about the relationship of Kizuki and Naoko and little sense that they wanted to be alone together. They were always
visiting each other’s homes and eating or playing mah-jongg with each other’s families.” Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood, P.29
Watanabe double-dates with them any number of times. Naoko will bring a classmate for him and the four of them will go to the zoo or the pool or a movie.
The girls Naoko bring is always pretty, but a little too refined for his taste. Watanabe gets along better with the somewhat cruder girls from his own public
high school who are easier to talk to. Watanabe can never tell what is going on inside the pretty heads of the girls that Naoko bring along, and they probably can’t
understand him, either.
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14 “Kizuki gave up trying to arrange dates for me, instead the three of us
would do things together. Kizuki and Naoko and I:odd, but that was the most comfortable combination. Introducing a fourth person into the
mix would always make things a little awkward. We were like a TV talk show, with me the guest.” Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood,
P.30
Kizuki the talented host, and Naoko his assistant. He is good at occupying that often impressed people as arrogant, but in fact he is a considerate and
fairminded person. He will distribute his remarks and jokes fairly to Naoko and to Watanabe, taking care to see that neither of them feel left out. If one or the other
stayed quiet too long, he will steer his conversation in that direction and gots the person to talk. The three of them spend a lot of time together, but whenever Kizuki
Leaves the room, Naoko and Watanabe have trouble talking to each other. They never know what to talk about. And in fact there is no topic of conversation that
they hold in common. Instead of talking, they have drunk water or toy with something on the table and wait for Kizuki to come back and start the conversation
up again. Naoko is not particularly talktive, and Watanabe is more of a listener than a talker, so he feels uncomfortable when he leaves alone with her. Not that
they are incompatible: they just have nothing to talk about. “I had no special interest in my afternoon classes, so together we left
school, ambled down the hill to a billiards parlor on the harbor four games. When I won the first, easygoing game, he got serious and won
the other three. This meant that I paid according to our custom. Kizuki made not a single wisecrack as we played, which was most unusual.
We had a smoke afterward.”Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood, P.32
Kizuki died that night in his garage. He led a rubber hose from the exhaust pipe of his N-360 to a window, taped over the gap in the window, and
revved the engine. Watanabe have no idea how long take him to die. His parents
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15 have been out visited a sick relative, and when they opening the garage to put their
car away, he is already dead. His radio is going, and a gas station receipt is tucked under the windshield wiper.
Kizuki have left no suicide note, and had no motive that anyone could think of. Because Watanabe have the last one to see him, Watanabe calls in for
questioning by the police. He tells the investigating officer that Kizuki gives no indication of what he is about to do, that he is exactly the same as always. The
policeman is obviously formed a poor impression of both Kizuki of Watanabe, as if it is perfectly natural for the kind of person who would skip classes and shoot
pool to commt suicide. A small article in the paper brought the affair to a close. Kizuki’s parents get rid of his red N-360. For a time, a white flower marked his
home room desk. In the ten months between Kizuki’s death and graduation, Watanabe is
unable to find a place for himself in the world around him. Watanabe applies to a private University in Tokyo, the kind of school with an entrance exam for which
he will not have to study much, and he does pass without exhilaration. “Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life.Translated into
words, it’s a cliche, but at the time I felt it not as words but as that knot of air inside me. Death exists-table-and we go on living and breathing
it into our lungs like fine dust.” Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood, P.33
In Tokyo, Watanabe meet the one person in his world who had read Gatsby, Watanabe and him became friends because of it.
“This man says he has read The Great Gatsby the three times. Well, any friend of Gatsby is a friend of mine.” Haruki Murakami,
Norwegian Wood, P.41
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16 They become friends. This happens in October. The better Watanabe got
to know Nagasawa, the stranger he seems. He have meet a lot strange people in Watanabe’s day, but none as strange as Nagasawa. He is a far more voracious
reader than him, but he makes it a rule never to touch a book by any author who have not been dead at least thirty years.
No one else in the dorm know that Nagasawa is a secret reader of classic novels, nor will it have matter if they have. Nagasawa knows for being smart. He
breeze into Tokyo University, he gots good grades, he will take the Civil Service Exam, join the Foreign Ministry, and become a diplomat. He comes from a super
family. His father owns a big hospital in Nagoya, and his brother have also graduated from Tokyo, gone on to medical school, and will one day inherit the
hospital. Nagasawa always have plenty of money in his pocket, and he carries himself with real dignity.
Nagasawa is unusually charismatic and complex in both his ideals and personal relationships. Watanabe routinely accompanies Nagasawa on outings to
bars, where they pick up girls for one-night stand. “We lived in the same dorm and knew each other only by sight, until
one day when I was reading Gatsby in a sunny spot in the dining hall.” Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood, P.41
There are sides to Nagasawa’s personality that conflicate in the extreme. Even Watanabe will be move by his kindness at times, but he can, just easily, be
malicious, and cruel. “Still, I never once opened my heart to him, and in that sense my
relationship with Nagasawa stood in stark contrast to my relationship with Kizuki. The first time I saw Nagasawa drunk and tormenting girl,
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17 I promised myself never, under any circumstances, to open myself up
to him.” Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood, P.43
1.2 Love Story
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