Kafka on the Shore is one of Murakami's more surreal novels with heavy use of symbolism and plot lines that balance on the knife edge between profound and ridiculous. The narrative is split into two main arteries that alternate from chapter to chapter. One storyline follows Kafka Tamura as he runs away from home. The other follows an older, mentally disabled man named Nakata.
Kafka is presented as someone with purpose, someone who has control over his destiny. He decides to run away from home because of an unhealthy relationship with his father. His journey is driven by his need to find his mother and sister who abandoned him when he was very young. The control that he seems to have even extends to his perception of truth. He sees the big picture and creates his own puzzle pieces of truth that fit exactly where he needs them to even though they are never explicitly confirmed.
Nakata on the other hand doesn't seem to have any control over his destiny. He doesn't have the mental capacity to worry about his purpose or judge events as positive or negative in context to his universe. He simply happens upon certain cues to action and he acts as if he has no alternative. In this way his body is a vessel for some unnamed architect.
Kafka represents the real world throughout most of the novel. His conflicts are real and he seeks real answers. That is until he is brought right to the edge of reality; as he falls in love with the ghost of a still living woman, as he travels to a different existence and is nearly trapped there for an eternity.
Nakata represents the surreal. Nakata can speak to cats, he murders a cat killing maniac by the name of Johnny Walker (yes, the same one who makes the whiskey), he gets involved with Colonel Sanders, (yes, the mascot of KFC) and he is given the responsibility of opening and closing the door to the world Kafka is nearly trapped in, where time doesn't exist, there is no such thing as written word, and people conduct tasks not because they choose to, but because they have to.
The story has so many unexpected turns, so many life-altering conflicts and literally every detail is interpretive. I can't imagine any one person feeling the same way about this book, or coming to the same conclusions. This is a big reason why I love reading Murakami. He writes poetry in the form of a novel, poetry that goes on for hundreds of pages and never gets at all boring or stale.
5/5
