Literature Analysis: Kafka on the Shore

1. Kafka on the Shore (Umibe no Kafka,in Japanese) by Haruki Murakami is about two different narrators switching off throughout the novel who are somehow interrelated. The odd chapters are narrated by a fifteen year old boy, Kafka Tamura's story. He runs away from his father's house to escape an Oedipal curse and to embark upon a quest to find his mother and sister. After a series of adventures, he finds shelter in a quiet, private library in Takamatsu, run by the distant and aloof Miss Saeki and the intelligent and more welcoming Oshima. There he spends his days reading the unabridged Richard Francis Burton translation of A Thousand and One Night and the collected works of Natsume Sōseki until the police begin inquiring after him in connection with a brutal murder.The even chapters are told from Satoru Nakata's point of view. Due to his uncanny abilities, he has found part-time work in his old age as a finder of lost cats (notably, Murakami's earlier work The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle also involves searching for a lost cat ). The case of one particular lost cat puts him on a path that ultimately takes him far away from his home, ending up on the road for the first time in his life. He befriends a truck driver named Hoshino, who takes him on as a passenger in his truck and soon becomes very attached to the old man. Nakata and Kafka are on a collision course throughout the novel, but their convergence takes place as much on a metaphysical plane as it does in reality and, in fact, that can be said of the novel itself. Due to the Oedipal theme running through much of the novel, Kafka on the Shore has been called a modern Greek tragedy.

2. The power and beauty of music as a communicative medium is a central theme of the novel, the very title comes from a pop song Kafka is given on a record in the library.The music of Beethoven, specifically the Archduke Trio is also used as a redemptive metaphor. Among other prominent themes are: the virtues of self-sufficiency and efficiency, the relation of dreams and reality, the specter of the heritage of World War II, the threat of fate, the uncertain grip of prophecy, and the power of nature.

3. The tone of the novel is somewhat mysterious, you are always wondering the connections and the lingering feelings and emotions. The novel seems to have not so much of a dark tone but still in a way sad, and there are tones of unsureness.

•"The pain Hoshino felt at that instant was awful, unreasonably so. A huge flash of light went off in his brain and everything went white. He stopped breathing. It felt like he'd been thrown from the top of a tall tower into the depths of hell. He couldn't even manage a scream, so hideous was the pain. All thoughts had burned up and shot away. It was like his body had been shattered to pieces. Even death couldn't be this awful, he felt. He tried to open his eyes but couldn't. He just lay there, helpless, face down on the tatami, drooling, tears streaming down his face."

•"I know I'm a little different from everyone else, but I'm still a human being. .... Sometimes, though, that small difference feels like an abyss."

• "But I'm scared, and my teeth won't stop chattering. Try as I might I can't get them to stop."

4.  Kafka's alter ego "Crow" who gave him advice was an interesting literary technique used, along with the motif about destiny, symbolism, insight to the character's thoughts and observations, paradox, and foreshadowing.

• Motif: "But the whole thing's fixed already. I can't just suddenly say I quit and stop what I'm doing. And taking my own life isn't an option. That's already been decided too."

• Motif: "If there's a curse in all this, you mean to grab it by the horns and fulfill the program that's been laid out for you."

• Symbolism: "Your hands are sticky with something- human blood, by the look of it. You hold them out in front of you, but there's not enough light to see. It's far too dark. Both inside, and out."

•Foreshadowing: "On my fifteenth birthday I'll run away from home, journey off to a far-off town, and live in a corner of a small library."
• Paradox " “Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they're also what tear you apart.”