The Unreality of Murakami’s Characters

In the short stories I kept reading, I found a lot of Murakami’s characters with "unreality". To be precise, these characters all have a more common feature, that is, they are disconnected from some parts of reality. In Driving My Car, the character Kafuku is similar to most of Murakami's characters or protagonists. His wife died and she slept with other men before she died. In Dance Dance Dance, the protagonist and his wife are divorced. In Killing Commendatore, the protagonist and his wife are also divorced. The wives of these men all said similar things to them. “Let's not go on living any longer." Whether their wives died or left, they all quietly withdrew from the lives of these men at a certain point in time. From this perspective, I think is a theme that Murakami wants people to think about, "unreality and life". The wife left these characters, divorced or died, and then went to find a lover, all these things made these characters disconnected from reality. This unsatisfactory nature of life allows the Murakami to embody their unreality to the fullest. Kafuku reminds me of Murakami's Gotanda in Dance Dance Dance, they are both actors, they are all disconnected from the real world. To a certain extent, his wife's death leaves Kafuku disconnected with the reality, while Gotanda completely lost contact with the world in the form of suicide. Interestingly, Gotanda's method of suicide was to drive a car into the sea, and Kafuku happened to be sitting in the car. It's just that he had his driver's license revoked for a drinking crash and was sitting in Misaki's car. Was it somehow Misaki pulling him back to reality? While unlike other protagonists who want to return to reality by having sex with different girls, Misaki, being the same “unreality” girl, pulls him back into the real world while resonating with Kafuku. Like Kafuku's conversation with Misaki. ““You loved being someone other than yourself?” “Yes, as long as I knew I could go back.” “Did you ever not want to go back?” “There's no other place to go back to, is there?” ” (Murakami, 20). From these conversations, Kafuku's suicidal precursors can be felt, and he wants to cut himself off from the world. In the end of the story, Misaki pulled Kafuku back. ““To me, It's a kind of sickness. Thinking about it doesn't do much good. The way my father walked out on my mother and me, my mother's constant abuse — I blame the sickness for those things. There's no logic involved . All I can do is accept what they did and try to get on with my life.” “So then we're all actors.” “Yes, I think that's true. To a point, anyway.” ”(Murakami, 40 ). In a sense, I think what Murakami is alluding to is depressed people, and they need to accpet what happened and accept themselves. Then they need to try to keep going with life. I think that's the “unreality” that Murakami wants us to think about in terms of his characters.

Junze Shan (Andrew)