Murakami on Mental Illness

Having just finished Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, I feel that I have to write about his portrayal of mental illness. There are few books that give an accurate representation of mental illnesses, many authors succumb to stereotypes and stigmas which somewhat blackens the characterisation of the sufferers that they have otherwise built up. Murakami never explicitly references the specific mental illnesses that he inflicts upon his characters and in doing so, he does not adhere to tropes generally applied to mental illness sufferers in literature - hence his ambiguity enhances his writing. Viewed from the perspective of a compassionate outsider rather than an almost anti-septic psychoanalyst, he allows his characters to be understood as people rather than as the walking embodiment of their diseases. The book's prevailing message - regarding the past's involvement in shaping the future, the representation of time as perfectly linear (never accommodating for clean breaks) and the portrayal of love as something that smashes every presentiment you've ever held about it - is underpinned by mental illness, its effects on both the sufferer and the observer.

The book's structure ensures that you never see those suffering as anything other than ordinary, for me I felt that Murakami was making the point that we are all deeply flawed human beings, each with a unique past that has forced us to grow up to be the people that we are; yet some of these flaws are perceived as 'wrong' and some are viewed as acceptable, rather than viewing these flaws objectively as flaws, we feel the need to categorise society into 'them' and 'us' - 'normal' and 'abnormal'. Murakami is definitely not a lazy writer, he has taken it upon himself to portray complex characters with their own individual idiosyncrasies and it is this that ensures that his characters are not defined by their illnesses. They are instead portrayed as people who simply feel the consequences of the burdens they have had to bear, each manifesting itself in a different manner... because no portrayal is flat, they are not stereotypes, they are people who are suffering yet coping as best as they can. Unfortunately, there is a futility that manifests itself in this portrayal, no character appears able to fully recover from their individual sufferings, there is a serious question raised about courage: is courage being able to end your suffering for yourself or is courage being able to carry on through the flames?

This futility is a frightening thought when one comes back to Murakami's philosophy that we are all inherently flawed and individually haunted by the shortcomings of our past. He explores the limits of mortality when faced with individual integrity and for me it's a beautifully accurate representation of the human psyche - both contradictory and conformist, uniform and unique. That may sound cliché but the duality and idiosyncrasy that runs through his narrative means that I can confidently affirm this as truth.