The loneliness of Murakami's written relationships.

     After reading a lot of Murakami's work specifically on how relationships exist with the narrator and the other characters in each work, there is this feeling of loneliness that is felt about these relationships, even when he two characters are close together, and that it usually ends in a tragic loss where someone dies or disappears. We see this in Murakami's works such as Tony Takitani and Norwegian Wood, where death is a common similarity between these two novels. In Tony Takitani I did feel as if his feelings towards his wife were strong and he couldn't get over her death which is understandable, but ultimately it just ends up with the written work literally saying he was "really alone." In Norwegian Wood and even the Wild Sheep Chase whereas in one the girlfriend dies and in the other the girlfriend disappears, and this shows how the narrator often like had this emotional gap with his girlfriend and he always writes as if there's a part of her he never understood fully. In Norwegian Wood this can be seen with Naoko where Toru doesn't understand Naoko's inability to move on from grief and how she loving him is more of a connection to Kizuki.  

    I think there is a silver lining to this in the sense that despite the trauma and grief that's endured here, there's often some realization here. Perhaps it is that like certain people truly are special, or that in some cases life changes and people have to accept that as hard as it may be, but I do think that despite the loneliness of these relationships there is in a way a feeling of calm in the sense that Murakami's couples still empathize with each other and are there for each other at least sometimes.

Mark