Even though we only read a little part of "Drive My Car", I nevertheless felt the protagonist's loneliness while reading it. This loneliness was not a sharp pain, but a subtle, aloof sense of being isolated from the others, as though it were the very atmosphere that is specific to Murakami's books. His characters are human but lack feeling, which adds a degree of doubt. They appear to view themselves from a distance, even though they live in actuality. His sadness is an unearthly air.
Although Kafuku lost his wife, I initially saw in him a yearning to explore the unknown rather than the sorrow of losing a loved one. Yet this very exploration became the source of his suffering. He couldn't figure out why she had cheated, but he continued looking for the hole she had left behind. He wanted to know, but the solution was never made public, leaving him stuck in a never-ending state of confusion.
I found his relationships with Takatsuki to be very complex. It was a near-masochistic drive to comprehend rather than the usual jealousy or retaliation. He eagerly pursued the man who had dated his wife, as though he might reestablish a connection with that unknown aspect of her. This act was really a psychological compulsion, even if it seemed reasonable at the time. The "incomprehensibility" was something he was forcing himself to face. He tried to comprehend not just his wife but also his own place in this relationship. He didn't know how much he had ever understood, or whether he had ever been loved at all. The persistence wasn't merely an obsession with love, but more like a quest for his “self.” What he was really searching for was who he truly was—a man who had been loved? A man who had been betrayed? Or, a man who had never truly faced love?
Murakami’s characters are never about finding answers, but about learning to coexist with those “things that cannot be understood.”
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