Ye Ji Park /
111053 / 12v1
Mr. Garrioch
World Literature
11 November 2013
“A deep well … You could fall in and that’d be the end
of you.”
“Somebody disappears all of a sudden, and they just can’t
find him. So then the people around here say, ‘Oh, he fell in the field well.’”
And this is how Naoko lost Kizuki and her sister. The
day he died, Kizuki played pool with Toru, and although he was more serious and
enthusiastic than usual, he showed no sign of committing suicide. Naoko's
sister was such a "bright, steady girl", who shut herself up in her
room for once in two or three months, but was otherwise perfectly fine. She
used to listen to Naoko's words in every detail and "make comments and
suggestions", but before she hung herself, she made no statement to Naoko.
What would have Naoko felt about their sudden run-in
into the field well? They were closest people to her – before the deaths, she
must have felt that they were openly communicating and deeply understanding
each other. But when the deaths occurred, without no motives or reasons Naoko
can think of or be persuaded by, Naoko realized that it was her vanity to
believe that she fully understood Kizuki and her sister, and felt guilt for not
noticing any hints of their collapse into the field well.
To prevent herself from experiencing same confusion,
Naoko seems to decide not to fully engage in interactions with others. She is
worried that if she opens her heart once again to Toru or Reiko, they might
just leave her someday without any explanation, as Kizuki and her sister did. Yet
she does not space out herself completely, which guarantees perfect contentment
of not being abandoned. She needs relationship, communication, and resulting
comfort to some extent. So she lets Toru stay besides her, but always with a
distance between them – on her birthday, for example, she lets Toru sleep with
her, but the very next moment she runs away from him.
Although Naoko's attitude seems justifiable,
considering "five or six minutes [of] a total blank" – or should we
say, emotional instability and confusion – she experienced while staring at her
sister's hanging body, it conclusively was a very selfish act. What she did to
Toru was better than what Kizuki or her sister did to her, because Toru definitely
was aware of the fact that he could not fully understand Naoko, and thus felt
less guilt and futility after she died; yet she did wrong, because she gave
Toru futile hope that if there is time, he can “come to understand [Naoko] … better
than anyone else in the world ever can”.
So this time, when Naoko leaves Toru without fully
explaining reason, it is Toru who suffers just as Naoko did after her sister
and Kizuki’s deaths. Toru admits that he didn’t understand Naoko completely,
thus was less hurt than Naoko once was; this helps him able to continue forming
empathizing, intimate relationships with Reiko. Yet he is hurt, too, and experiences
problem interacting with Midori. At the end of this novel, Toru describes the
place he stands “the dead center … that was no place”, which clearly shows his isolation
caused by Naoko’s struggle to defend herself from the slight possibility of
Toru abandoning her. (541 words)
