Kafka on the Shore

Kafka tries to stay awake, but he keeps dozing off and then waking up again. Once, when he wakes, the young girl is already sitting at the desk, with her chin in her hands, gazing at the painting. Kafka is certain the girl is the young Miss Saeki. His heart begins pounding so loudly that young Miss Saeki seems to hear it, but Kafka thinks she dismisses the sound because it’s not part of her dream. She stays for about 20 minutes before getting up and walking out the door. Kafka realizes that “[s]he and I are in two separate worlds, divided by an invisible barrier” (242).

Waking near dawn on Thursday morning, Kafka wanders outside to the seashore, trying to identify the location in the painting. The boy called Crow arrives to help clarify Kafka’s dilemma: he’s jealous of a boy long dead and in love with a girl who no longer exists, and wants to trade places with that dead boy in order to have that time with the girl his loves. Crow says, “You’ve wandered into a labyrinth of time, and the biggest problem of all is that you have no desire at all to get out” (243).