Abstract
Death is an inveterate theme in the narrative of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood (1987). The current paper analyzes Norwegian Wood (1987) from the perspectives of different literary and psychological theories to measure the impacts of death and formations of trauma on the psyches of different characters of the novel. It shows how Toru Watanabe, the narrator gets recovered from his trauma through a purgatory solitary journey while Naoko, the main female character develops post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and ends up killing herself. The study also scrutinizes how ‘memory’ functions in the cognitive system of the human brain and gives a study of how and what affects the brain to develop trauma. In doing so, it draws references to contemporary Japan and literary pieces from different parts of the world.
Keywords: Post-modern fiction, trauma theory, suicide, memory, PTSD