Poorva Parashar asked this question about
Kafka on the Shore:
WHY is this book so loved? I mean, I didn't gain anything out of it. I'm not asking this as an insult. I genuinely want to know what the special thing about this book is.
Ankita H
Kafka On The Shore is my first Haruki Murakami book. It left me feeling things that a very few books have the ability to do and I felt I needed to jot…moreKafka On The Shore is my first Haruki Murakami book. It left me feeling things that a very few books have the ability to do and I felt I needed to jot them down before I forgot what the first (maybe last?) reading felt like. There's parts of it I like and there's parts that I don't care for.
I feel Kafka On The Shore is a story about self-discovery. I saw a lot of mixed reviews about the book and a common refrain was that it was maddeningly incomplete and left many things unexplained. However, after turning the pages over in my head several times, it didn’t seem that incomplete to me. Right around the time that Kafka explains why he likes The Miner by Natsume Soseki, I kind of knew that this was not going to be a book that leaves you feeling satisfied. This is a story that one has to think about over and over again until you finally make peace with what comes out of it. Kind of similar to how the protagonist is lost and confused but makes peace with his life in the end.
Once you piece the lines on the first few pages and the last few pages together, a lot of things fall into place.
The author brings us 6 characters that live half-lives. They represent different types of people. Some manage to make their lives whole while some others don’t.
Kakfa, a lost kid filled with hurt, does not understand why things in life had to happen the way they did. Cursed with a cruel father and not having experienced the warmth of a mother’s love, he runs away seeking the ‘other’. He struggles with unresolved feelings and guilt. However, he realizes that the storm he was trying to escape was within him and it only dies down when he lets go of his hurt and accepts life as something to be lived. And his half-life becomes whole.
Miss Saeki represents people who lose a part of their soul to the past, forever longing for something that is never going to return. Only death brings them respite and lets them re-embrace the other half of their life.
Nakata represents people who lead a half-life for no fault of their own. Life’s circumstances are beyond their control and yet they eke out a living that feels more or less complete until one day it doesn’t. But they accept the incompleteness for what it was until they pass on to the other world, finally making their lives whole.
Oshima represents people who have accepted the fact that life can be confusing. There are several battles to be fought but life doesn’t have to be a fight. One can chisel out an identity and lead a fulfilling life with the acceptance that lines can be blurry and shadows can be incomplete. Their life is half and whole at the same time.
Hoshino is a relatively average guy that lets life pass him by until his worldview is broadened by chance encounters. He does a course-correction and decides to live the rest of his life with heightened awareness and gratitude, in a pursuit to make his life whole.
Kafka’s father represents the tormented that torment all others to fabricate a purpose for their meaningless half-lives. They lead lives of violence, physical and mental, and are forever stuck between here and there, never having the chance to make their lives whole.
I couldn’t make much of Sakura’s character. Hers came off as a sorted-out personality who knew what they had to do in life and exactly how they had to go about it. And I guess there are people who seem like it.
The symbolism in the book didn’t always talk to me. However, some things made a little sense probably after I added meaning to them. The mention of the supposed UFO sighting on top of the hill brings out the idea that self-absorption of adults sometimes makes them resort to violent behaviors alien to themselves and to the children around them. While the effect on some children is temporary, the damage to some may be permanent. It leaves other grown-ups puzzled as to why certain events transpire and why children turn out the way they do, while the explanation lurks behind the guilty conscience of certain ‘responsible’ adults. It brings out the idea that adults do not often take responsibility for the effect their actions have on their children until much later in life, when it is somewhat romantic to look back at the follies of youth and gain a semblance of self-forgiveness by confessing to what has troubled them all their lives.
The shower of fish in a section of Nakano Ward represents the futility of blessings in this world after people have passed on to the other. What good did the shower of fish do for the cats that had died to satiate the whims of a madman. The student revolt being put down, two days after the Miss Saeki’s boyfriend was killed, reflects a similar idea.
The interpretation of the shower of leeches brings out another idea similar to that fleshed out through Kafka’s father’s character. The gang of bikers torturing one of their own in the parking lot represents how people turn on a friend/loved one and often suck their life out (much like a leech), to pass time in their own versions of hell.
These are some ideas that stayed with me. The longer that I think about this book, the more is the meaning that I seemingly get out of it. I don't know if that's due to the writing or due to my desire to ascribe meaning to it. It’s just one of those books. Had I read this book a couple of years ago, the absorbing imagery and the pull of the inexplicable would have led me down a possibly dangerous mental path, much like the thick forest that the protagonist had to navigate, before I finally got to the other side and pulled myself back to the real world. I was running away from my own sandstorms back then. Now that I am in a different place, I feel that each one of us has the capacity to turn into any one of the characters in this book. Heck, we might end up being all of the characters in a single lifetime. As we walk through different phases of our life, we can look to these characters to make more sense of our own lives and maybe get lucky enough to have the boy named Crow (the voice in our own heads) guide us through it and have the ubiquitous cats keep us company.
(less)
I feel Kafka On The Shore is a story about self-discovery. I saw a lot of mixed reviews about the book and a common refrain was that it was maddeningly incomplete and left many things unexplained. However, after turning the pages over in my head several times, it didn’t seem that incomplete to me. Right around the time that Kafka explains why he likes The Miner by Natsume Soseki, I kind of knew that this was not going to be a book that leaves you feeling satisfied. This is a story that one has to think about over and over again until you finally make peace with what comes out of it. Kind of similar to how the protagonist is lost and confused but makes peace with his life in the end.
Once you piece the lines on the first few pages and the last few pages together, a lot of things fall into place.
The author brings us 6 characters that live half-lives. They represent different types of people. Some manage to make their lives whole while some others don’t.
Kakfa, a lost kid filled with hurt, does not understand why things in life had to happen the way they did. Cursed with a cruel father and not having experienced the warmth of a mother’s love, he runs away seeking the ‘other’. He struggles with unresolved feelings and guilt. However, he realizes that the storm he was trying to escape was within him and it only dies down when he lets go of his hurt and accepts life as something to be lived. And his half-life becomes whole.
Miss Saeki represents people who lose a part of their soul to the past, forever longing for something that is never going to return. Only death brings them respite and lets them re-embrace the other half of their life.
Nakata represents people who lead a half-life for no fault of their own. Life’s circumstances are beyond their control and yet they eke out a living that feels more or less complete until one day it doesn’t. But they accept the incompleteness for what it was until they pass on to the other world, finally making their lives whole.
Oshima represents people who have accepted the fact that life can be confusing. There are several battles to be fought but life doesn’t have to be a fight. One can chisel out an identity and lead a fulfilling life with the acceptance that lines can be blurry and shadows can be incomplete. Their life is half and whole at the same time.
Hoshino is a relatively average guy that lets life pass him by until his worldview is broadened by chance encounters. He does a course-correction and decides to live the rest of his life with heightened awareness and gratitude, in a pursuit to make his life whole.
Kafka’s father represents the tormented that torment all others to fabricate a purpose for their meaningless half-lives. They lead lives of violence, physical and mental, and are forever stuck between here and there, never having the chance to make their lives whole.
I couldn’t make much of Sakura’s character. Hers came off as a sorted-out personality who knew what they had to do in life and exactly how they had to go about it. And I guess there are people who seem like it.
The symbolism in the book didn’t always talk to me. However, some things made a little sense probably after I added meaning to them. The mention of the supposed UFO sighting on top of the hill brings out the idea that self-absorption of adults sometimes makes them resort to violent behaviors alien to themselves and to the children around them. While the effect on some children is temporary, the damage to some may be permanent. It leaves other grown-ups puzzled as to why certain events transpire and why children turn out the way they do, while the explanation lurks behind the guilty conscience of certain ‘responsible’ adults. It brings out the idea that adults do not often take responsibility for the effect their actions have on their children until much later in life, when it is somewhat romantic to look back at the follies of youth and gain a semblance of self-forgiveness by confessing to what has troubled them all their lives.
The shower of fish in a section of Nakano Ward represents the futility of blessings in this world after people have passed on to the other. What good did the shower of fish do for the cats that had died to satiate the whims of a madman. The student revolt being put down, two days after the Miss Saeki’s boyfriend was killed, reflects a similar idea.
The interpretation of the shower of leeches brings out another idea similar to that fleshed out through Kafka’s father’s character. The gang of bikers torturing one of their own in the parking lot represents how people turn on a friend/loved one and often suck their life out (much like a leech), to pass time in their own versions of hell.
These are some ideas that stayed with me. The longer that I think about this book, the more is the meaning that I seemingly get out of it. I don't know if that's due to the writing or due to my desire to ascribe meaning to it. It’s just one of those books. Had I read this book a couple of years ago, the absorbing imagery and the pull of the inexplicable would have led me down a possibly dangerous mental path, much like the thick forest that the protagonist had to navigate, before I finally got to the other side and pulled myself back to the real world. I was running away from my own sandstorms back then. Now that I am in a different place, I feel that each one of us has the capacity to turn into any one of the characters in this book. Heck, we might end up being all of the characters in a single lifetime. As we walk through different phases of our life, we can look to these characters to make more sense of our own lives and maybe get lucky enough to have the boy named Crow (the voice in our own heads) guide us through it and have the ubiquitous cats keep us company.
(less)
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more