Forests and Exits in Murakami's Novels

After reading Murakami’s novel Kafka on the Shore and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, I found Murakami depict many scenes about the forest. This reminds me of a sentence I thought was very interesting about the forest in Norwegian Wood. "Everyone has his own piece of forest, maybe we have never been to it, but it has always been there, always there. Those who are lost are lost, and those who meet will meet again." And I remember in Killing Commendatore and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle also mentions forests and finding exit. 

At the beginning of Chapter 45 of Kafka on the Shore, Murakami associates the forest with "entrance" and he also describes two soldiers. I think soldiers are the two subconscious forms of the protagonist, that is, his sense of confrontation. A tall soldier and a short soldier. A "soldier" can be in any form, or it can be a "Commendatore" or "The boy named Crow". They are all helping the protagonist to think and find the exit. In the forest, the protagonist meets 15-year-old Saeki, and I think they are two lost people. The protagonist is lost in the past and the curse left by his father. It is not entirely the curse of his father, but more of his own knot. And Saeki also stayed in the past, this is actually just a shadow of Saeki. The 15-year-old Saeki no longer exists, and the protagonist is trapped in his own "forest" and cannot connect with the real world. He just wanted to meet the 15-year-old Saeki he imagined in his subconscious mind, not the real her. The forest is another place, a place far from reality. The protagonist needs to untie the knot and return to life. To untie the knot is to get out of the forest and find the exit. 

These people described by Murakami are confused people, and they wandering in the forest looking for an exit is to find a way out of self-redemption in the confusion. Everyone has their own knot, but some people are caught in the knot and can't find a way to untie it. And some people find a way to untie their knots, which may be untied by themselves or with the help of others. The bottom of the well mentioned in the Wind-up Bird Chronicle, the attic mentioned in the Killing Commendatore, these are all places to find an "exit". Whether sitting at the bottom of the well, or climbing up to the attic. All one has to do is keep thinking and keep "dancing". Only in this way can the real "exit" and the real meaning be found.

Junze Shan (Andrew)