Norwegian Wood left me feeling very
emotional because of how immersive the sense of loneliness and, at times, hopelessness
felt throughout the novel. Watanabe starts off with a tragic backstory and
appears alienated from society as a result of the trauma inflicted upon him by
Kizuki’s suicide. Much of the book follows him coping with that trauma or
trying to move past it, but his relationship with Naoko keeps him tethered to the
past. For most of the novel, he is waiting for Naoko to get better with no end
to her battle with mental illness in sight. He appears to be getting better at
times throughout the novel on his own, but his commitment to Naoko, which really seems to
stem from his inability to get over Kizuki’s death, prevents him from being
able to throw himself into the world and experience all it has to offer. This
is marked by the vast differences in settings between Tokyo and the sanatorium,
and their different love interests, Midori and Naoko respectively. Tokyo is
rife with different opportunities and the uncertainty that comes with them,
including the prospect of a relationship with Midori, as Reiko explicitly mentions.
The sanatorium, on the other hand, clearly provides an escape from this world.
It is for damaged people like Naoko who cannot go on living in society because
of the trauma or mental illness that they’re suffering from, yet it also brings a
sense of security by denying the world and all its uncertainty. Watanabe is
constantly torn between these two worlds and the prevalence of suicide in the
novel emphasizes his agency regarding the choice of which one to belong to.
The end of the novel is interesting, because it is not exactly clear which world he has chosen, or whether or not he even has a choice by the end. On the phone with Midori, he loses his sense of space and the coherence of the world around him completely breaks down. Is he having some sort of a panic attack and suffering from trauma in the same way that Naoko did? Or is it indicative of him embracing the overwhelming uncertainty of the world he has finally become able to enter? It's very unclear, and I find it difficult to tie it to the beginning of the novel when he's in Hamburg airport. Nevertheless, I think the ambiguous ending suits the story well and reiterates the embrace of uncertainty that Watanabe struggles with throughout the novel.
- Max Dahlstrom
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