Chloe's Post #4

I personally love Midori as a character. She's the only comedic element in the novel, and she's such a colorful, honest, odd person. She reminded me of May Kasahara from Wind-Up Bird. But I didn't like that she was so demanding with Watanabe; she could be very selfish and leading with him. I also think I was against them as a couple because I was secretly rooting for Naoko, although as a character I knew that she wasn't as engaging and probably would make Watanabe unhappy because she didn't love him. Yet once Midori and W actually declared their love for one another and got together, I was very fond of them as a couple. 

The ending was, like we discussed in class, mixed. It's not a definitively happy note despite the fact that Watanabe finally reaches out to Midori and is ready to be with her. He feels lost among a sea of people and is having some sort of internal crisis following the revelation that he is ready to commit. Personally, I would've just ended it after he says "I want the two of us to start from the beginning." but because Murakami is Murakami, his novels always have open-endings and multiple interpretations.

Suicide and sex were two common themes throughout Norwegian Wood. It feels like Watanabe treats sex like shaking a woman's hand or something - he does it with nearly all of the women in the novel except for Hatsumi (and I still thought they were going to do it when he escorted her home). And there were four suicides in the novel - Kizuki, Naoko, Naoko's sister, and Hatsumi.