EPT+ Show Spoiler +
" I took my bottled firefly to the roof. No one else was up there. A white undershirt hung on a clothesline where someone had forgotten to take it in, waving in the evening breeze like the discarded shell of some huge insect. I climbed a steel ladder in the corner of the roof to the top of the dormitory's water tank. The tank was still warm with the heat of the sunlight it had absorbed during the day. I sat in the narrow space atop the tank, leaning against the handrail and coming face-to-face with a white moon only slightly short of full. The lights of Shinjuku glowed to the right, and Ikebukuro to the left. Car headlights flowed in brilliant streams from one pool of light to the other. A dull roar of jumbled sounds hung over the city like a cloud.
The firefly made a faint glow in the bottom of the jar, its light took weak, its color too pale. I hadn't seen a firefly in years, but the ones in my memory sent a far more intense light into the summer darkness, and that brilliant, burning image was the one that had stayed with me all that time. . .
I tried to recall when I had last seen fireflies, and where it might have been. I could see the scene in my mind, but was unable to recall the time or place. I could hear the sound of water in the darkness and see an old fashioned brick sluice. It had handle you could turn to open and close the gate. The stream it controlled was small enough to be hidden by the grass on its banks. The night was dark, so dark I couldn't see my feet when I turned out my flashlight. Hundreds of fireflies drifted over the pool of water held back by the sluice gate, their hot glow reflected in the water like a shower of sparks."
The firefly made a faint glow in the bottom of the jar, its light took weak, its color too pale. I hadn't seen a firefly in years, but the ones in my memory sent a far more intense light into the summer darkness, and that brilliant, burning image was the one that had stayed with me all that time. . .
I tried to recall when I had last seen fireflies, and where it might have been. I could see the scene in my mind, but was unable to recall the time or place. I could hear the sound of water in the darkness and see an old fashioned brick sluice. It had handle you could turn to open and close the gate. The stream it controlled was small enough to be hidden by the grass on its banks. The night was dark, so dark I couldn't see my feet when I turned out my flashlight. Hundreds of fireflies drifted over the pool of water held back by the sluice gate, their hot glow reflected in the water like a shower of sparks."
Norwegian wood connected with me in a way that no other book has. It's not the storyline that I liked the most, it's the way he tells the story through the first person view of the main character, Watanabe. Something specific I want to mention is I can feel the environment change when Watanabe goes to Ami Hostel (a sanitarium). I felt at peace, I felt as if nothing bad could possibly happen. I was there.
And just like that, when Watanabe leaft Ami Hostel, I left with him. The college and city come back, the flaws of the outside world. The majority of the beginning of the story takes place in Watanabe's college and areas around it, and I was like "okay, that's cool". However, when he went to the sanitarium, I saw a place of absolute peace. That's why when the scene shifts back to college and the city again, it's still the same college and city, and Murakami uses the same words, but I could just feel the difference and the flaws and the grossness of society and the world outside Ami Hostel. The feel is what I'm trying to say here.
When I read the book, I felt it.
The book is Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. I highly recommend it!
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