Summary
Kafka on the Shore written by Murakami Haruku mainly talked about a fifteen-year-old boy named Tamura Kafka by himself who escaped from his father’s house when he turned into 15. The author never explained his real name in the book. He took the long-distance bus to Shikoku. His reason for leaving is to escape the father’s terrible prophecy than the Oedipus king: You will kill your father and married to your mother and older sister. When Kafka was four years old, his mother suddenly disappeared and took away the older sister who is 4 years older than Kafka. In fact, she was the daughter of Tamura’s family. Kafka has never seen his mother’s picture, and he didn’t his mother’s name. He accidentally came to a private library where he lived. The curator, Ms. Saeki, is a beautiful woman in her forties who has tortuous mysteries. Kafka suspected that she was his mother, and Saeki was not convinced. Kafka fell in love with her and had a relationship with her. The secondary line of this novel talked about a middle-aged man called Nakata. He experienced a mysterious coma in elementary school during World War II. From then on, he forgot everything. he would not even recognize words. Fortunately, he got the ability to talk with cats. In the case the loss of control, he killed a madman who claimed to be Johnny Walker and dressed like a British gentleman painted on the famous whiskey trademark. He came to the same place where Kafka came by car. The novel is divided into 49 chapters. The odd chapters basically tell the story of Kafka in a realistic way, and even chapters show the adventures of Nakata in a magical way. The two methods are used interchangeably to weave a modern fable that is extremely fictitious and fictional. Saeki is the point of integration of these two stories, and the uncle’s prophecy seems to be ultimately unavoidable because the madman Johnny Walker is actually dressed as Kafka’s father, and the real murder is not Nakata…
Lu Yao ’19