Summary And Symbolism Of Water In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

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Haruki Murakami incorporates the symbol of water throughout his novel, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. He associates characters and places to the idea of water. Murakami first reveals the significance of water through the psychic Honda’s messages.
Honda warns Toru about the power that water can have over him as well as resisting “the flow”.
Honda warns Toru to stay away from water because “‘Sometime in the future, [he] could experience real suffering in connection with water. Water that’s missing from where it’s supposed to be. Water that’s present where it’s not supposed to be’”(Murakami, 51).
Skeptical Toru ignores Honda and dismisses his powers at that moment since he yet hasn’t captured the impressioning role that water may have in his life.
Later
…show more content…
When the well begins to flood Toru was in a confused state wondering
“...why had this well started producing water all of a sudden? It had been dried up, dead, for such a long time, yet now it had come back to life. Could this have some connection with what I had accomplished there?... Something might have loosened whatever it was that had been obstructing the vein of water”(588).
This is a representation of the new state in life Toru has reached and Honda’s predictions coming to a conclusion.
Toru was searching for a purpose or a meaning of some kind to his life.
He was passive and let everyone make decisions for him.
But because he fought for what he wanted and defeated a menace to his happiness. There was a restoration.
Now that the well has been filled and the otherworld closed off, Toru came to a conclusion as to what he wanted in his life.
He wanted Kumiko and he had defeated the main thing getting in their way. “I was dying. Like all the other people who live in this world”(590).
However morbid, that may sound, Toru finally stopped being an outsider and rejoined the rest of the

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