Nakata’s Story Essay

He does after all state in an interview on the authors official Murakami website (http//www. randomhouse. com/features/murakami)) Myths be the prototype for all stories. When we write a story on our own it cant serve but link up with all sorts of Myths. His works explore how ancient myths can impact the lives of evening a normal teenaged boy like Kafka Tamura, and how those myths interweave with Nipponese culture even in todays more Westernized Japan. Kafkas journey begins in a library which I would realize as being key to understanding who Kafka is.He loves reading and books and has been taught to value knowledge. In a genuinely real champion this is true for Kafka since knowledge is the one matter that will ensure his survival on his journey of self discovery. There Kafka meets a young trans-gendered librarian named Oshima who suffers from a form of rare hemophilia. Oshima as well acts as a guide who leadss Kafka to the gates to the underworld. This is where Kafka will di scover what truly happened to his mother and sister, as well as what kind of man his father really is.The final guide on Kafkas Journey of self discovery is the Head Librarian of the Komura Library, dangle Saeki. Kafka gets the strangest feeling when he is around her that she baron be his long lost mother. This is where the novel starts tying into the Ancient Greek myth of Oedipus. The tale of Oedipus( Sophocles, The Oedipus Trilogy roam Gutenberg http//www. gutenberg. org) is from a play by the Greek playwright Sophocles about a King who is told by fortune-teller that if his fraught(p) wife bears a son that the child will grow up to kill his father, and have internal relations with his mother.The play is very tragic but Murakamis story although tragic in most places is filled with a very subtle light. Kafka has some instead severe issues regarding the disappearance of his mother when he was four. As a four year old he was told by his father that oftentimes as Oedipus he wou ld end up in an incestuous relationship with his mother. In a way this becomes a self fulfilling prophecy for Kafka as he falls in love with Miss Saeki whom he suspects is his mother. He states to his spirit guide Crow I am in love with Miss Saeki. (p. 400 Kafka on the Shore Vintage Paperbacks, 2005) and from this point on Miss Saeki becomes the focus of his obsession. Kafka feels conflicted over his mothers abandonment. He never understood why his mother left, and apparently his father never explained to him why she left. Part of this sense of abandonment is what has lead Kafka to run away from home. Shortly after arriving at the library Kafka finds himself unconscious in a pile of brush at the side of the road with no memory of what had happened to him.He is cover in blood yet un-injured, and he calls Sakura for help. After she picks him up they have a sexual get at her apartment. After this he heads back to the library and decides he cannot return to the hotel he has been living in. Oshima offers Kafka the natural selection of remaining in a cabin that Oshimas family owns in the mountains until Oshima can arrange for Kafka to take up hall in one of the rooms that is available at the library. It is here that Kafka begins to wonder if his experience with Sakura was the right thing to do as he suspects Sakura is his sister.Upon moving into the library Kafka hears from Oshima the tragic story of Mss Saekis life. According to Oshima Miss Saekis basically stopped at twenty, when her lover died. No, maybe not age twenty, maybe much earlier.. I dont know the details. But, you need to be aware of this. The hands of the Japanese Dreams clock buried inside her soul ground to a halt then. Time outside, of course flows on as always, but she isnt affected by it. (p 161 Kafka on The Shore Vintage Paperbacks, 2005).It is from this point that Kafka begins to phrase an almost Oedipal obsession over a woman who may, or may not be his biological mother. It is also around the same time that Kafka discovers that his sculptor father has been murdered in a rather gory fashion in Tokyo. It is from here that Kafkas tale takes on a truly surreal quality when he flees to Oshimas cabin in the woods fearing that he will be charge of the murder of his father. This is what leads into the tale of the second main character.