Resumo de Kafka On The Shore - Murakami; Haruki

This philosophical tale is a kaleidoscope of themes, symbols, and metaphors. Murakami delves into the darkest parts of the human psyche. The characters confront their darkest selves in an unpretentious way. Memory is a construct that can keep an individual from living or enrich their existence. The line between reality and dreams blurs in the mind causing a rift between the inner and outer consciousness.

A fifteen year old boy from Nakano self named Kafka Tamura has a fractured mind. To avoid being forever scarred by his father?s apathy, anger, and an oedipal prophecy he runs away. Kafka discovers open minded and strange people at a private library in Takamatsu. One is a woman, Ms. Saeki, who after experiencing and losing a great love becomes empty. Her memories of a better time keep her from living. She seems to be waiting for something. She runs the library and offers Kafka a job and a place to stay. Oshima, her assistant, is another study of human nature. He is a girl living as a male. Oshima provides the runaway refuge and becomes Kafka?s confidant. Oshima provides insight and directs Kafka on his journey of self discovery.

When Kafka?s sculptor father is stabbed to death he believes he murdered his father in a dream. Even though the fifteen year old is physically unable to accomplish this, there is another character who admits to the killing. Nakata is a simpleton who talks to cats and speaks of himself in the third person. A childhood accident wiped his mind clean of everything he was. Nakata can neither read nor write though he has supernatural powers. He travels from Nakano to Takamatsu to accomplish an unknown objective.

These characters are interconnected in odd ways. Kafka thinks Ms Saeki could be his mother though he falls in love with her and they have a sexual relationship. Ms Saeki believes Kafka is her dead lover reincarnated. When Nakata kills Kafka?s father he sees the father as a sick kind of pied piper who eats cat?s hearts and is trying to create a magic flute. The sculptor has chosen Nakata to kill him. When Ms Saeki was young she wanted to exist in that time of happiness forever so she opened a door which should have never been opened. That choice had far reaching consequences. Nakata must shut the door and end the imbalance. Kafka must travel through the labyrinth of his mind and forgive his mother for abandoning him at the age of four. He must also decide whether to live his life and keep memories in their place.

Like Franz Kafka?s existential stories there is surreal dream logic and knowledge of human nature. Kafka on the Shore is a song, a painting, a picture, and the story of a young man?s journey into maturity. This is an amazing novel that you could read over and over and find something new and interesting every time. It also treats the fantastic and the real with the same measure of gravity. Some questions are never answered, but the work does not feel unfinished.

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