The vitality of Norwegian Wood is largely due to the expressive memory of Watanabe. When reading it, it doesn't even feel like a recollection across years because the writing is so vivid and concrete. Especially in the chapters where Watanabe visits Naoko at the mountain asylum, the description is so detailed including the scene of mountain, the environment of the room they live and so on. This creates an illusion that this is not a fading memory, but an eternal "now."
For Watanabe, life is a series of departures, like Kizuki's. The most impressive scene for me when reading is the firefly gifted by his roommate Trooper. It was trapped in a coffee bottle. Watanabe released it and watched the glow of the fireflies gradually fade away in the darkness. This firefly is a metaphor for those who have passed. Though their light was dim, they left an impressive mark of his memory.
This reminds me of the movie Coco: "Death is not scary; the final death is being forgotten by everyone." The meaning of those captured details and recorded moments lies in the act of remembering itself. As long as someone remembers, those "fireflies" that vanished into the night will never truly go out.
Vivian (Zihan Yan)
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