The Women of Norwegian Wood

The driving force behind the novel Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami are the two women in the Protagonist Toru Watanabe’s life, Naoko and Midori.

Midori and Naoko are written to contrast each other. On one hand Midori is a Lively girl who is energetic and outgoing. On the other hand, Naoko keeps to herself and is really vulnerable. Both Midori and Naoko have suffered losses of their close ones but react to it in different ways. Midori is apathetic to the loss of her mother whereas Naoko is distraught over the loss of her sister. Midori is yet again Apathetic to the loss of her father whereas we see Naoko losing a part of herself when she loses Kizuki.

I saw Midori and Naoko representing Life and Death respectively. Midori is always seen full of life; she exudes a positive energy whenever she is present. Midori sings a song which she wrote where she claims that she has nothing, but she does not let that push her down. When there is a possibility of her house burning down, she firmly says that she is not running away and that she does not mind dying. She bravely faces what’s coming at her despite the hardships she had faced till date.

“The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything’s dark and you can’t see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive.” — Midori
— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

These words come back to play in the end as we see Toru standing in telephone booth talking to Midori but is not able to grasp where he is. Despite wanting to begin anew, he seems to be more dead than alive with the memories of Naoko.

Naoko on the other hand always carries death around her. She constantly hears the voices of Kizuki and her sister calling her to them. She tells Toru not to wait for her and to sleep with other girls if he wants to, all she wants is for him to remember her which greatly reflects her theme and the conclusion of her character.

When confronted Naoko states that “You’re wasting your life being involved with me.” It is like Naoko knows that there is no future for her. She feels that Kizuki and her did not pay when they should have and now the bills are due. She wants to get better and live her life but she is constantly pulled down by her own thoughts.

“No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning.” — Toru
— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Toru has worked himself up from the sorrow of losing his best friend and as he quotes earlier whatever he learnt from it is of no use when he faces the death of another beloved one.

“The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living.” says Naoko and irony hits hard. There is a constant foreboding of death around Naoko. It all comes together as we see Naoko who was supposedly getting better die abruptly by hanging herself. This hints the fact that she got better only because she had already chosen to commit suicide.

“I once had a girl
Or should I say she once had me”

“And when I awoke I was alone
This bird had flown”

— Norwegian Wood, Beatles

The Lyrics of the Beatles hit song applies to both the women in Toru’s life. Both of them never were in an actual relationship with Toru but had captured his heart. Both women left him to be alone as we see with the death of Naoko and the loneliness of Toru in the end as he is unable to hear Midori despite calling out to her from a place which was no place. There is also the more literal reference of an older Toru recalling the two women as he listens to an orchestral cover of the song which instantly reminds him of them.

“Long after the firefly had disappeared, the trail of its light remained inside me, its pale, faint glow hovering on and on in the thick darkness behind my eyelids like a lost soul. More than once I tried stretching my hand out in that darkness. My fingers touched nothing. The faint glow remained, just beyond their grasp.”
— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood