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ISSN : 1226-4946(Print)
ISSN : 2288-5412(Online)
The Yeats Journal of Korea Vol.34 pp.275-293
DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.14354/yjk.2010.34.275

The Supernatural Elements as Metaphors of Life in W. B. Yeats's Purgatory and Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore*

Rhee Young Suck

Abstract

Yeats and Murakami are writers who believe in spirits. They both treat them asif they are real. Yeats’s Purgotory is a story of Father and Son, Father killing hisown son to disrupt the cycle of Life that is tainted, whereas Kafka on the Shore isa story of Mother and Son, Mother causing all the tragedies in Kafka’s father,sister, and himself. Kafka’s mother is a person of Memory that stays constant,which is the origin of all the tragedies, and refuses to flow with time; and Sonintervenes in her Fate, changing her and himself. The leitmotif of the novel is theOedipus complex. In the meantime, Purgatory is a practice of Yeats’s religioussystem of Life and humanity. In the play, the two kinds of people are illustrated byFather and Son; Father can see the invisible, ghosts, but Son cannot. The play isbased on the conception of souls being born again and again in endless cycles. Todisrupt it Father kills his own Son, as he had killed his own Father. It is beyondthe moral of the world, killing his own son, following his own belief.
Both works could be read as a metaphor of life. One relies on psychology, andthe other relies on mythology. Murakami may have read Yeats, and Yeats might beinterested in Murakami if he lived and read him. Murakami is in a position to dealwith this kind of subtle subject in a subtle way, because he is a writer of the Eastwell versed in the West. In the same way, Yeats was in a unique position, whowas familiar with things eastern. Hence, their works manifest strong inclinationstoward mysterious milieu, most prominently what is supernatural.

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