Mourning and Melancholia in Norwegian Wood and Never Let Me Go

Abstract

Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood (1987) and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) are the novels about the lives of some young people growing and understanding life, and coming to terms with the obstacles of living. The characters of Never Let Me Go are clone humans who were raised to be organ donors for normal humans till their death. This pattern of life was fixed for them, and they accepted this as their fate, like accepting the inevitability of death. However, these clones did not have a choice to live a different life which they still desired despite being sure about their purpose of existence. On the other hand, Norwegian Wood’s characters have suffered through the loss of a loved one and the struggle of overcoming the grief of the loss. While one character succumbed to the grief, another character overcame it. This paper will conduct a psychoanalysis of the two novels using the framework of Sigmund Freud’s mourning and melancholia. The characters of both novels deal with a sense of loss, either the loss of a loved person or the loss of an ideal life. The theory of mourning and melancholia will be used to analyze how the characters are processing the grief of their loss. Along with Freud’s theory, Judith Butler’s explanation of mourning will also be used to discuss the two novels.