In this post, I am going to write about life. Naoko obviously hates hers at this point: Kayla, her so called best friend, blocks her on chat message, she sees her father as a pathetic loser, her mom practically seems non-existent in her life, and she gets bullied at school. However, the one source of light in her life is Old Jiko. In all this chaos she seems to find peace with Old Jiko. Naoko’s life seems out of her control and she is non-chalant about it; however, she still keeps her life. In that way, I mean she talks about dying all the time, but she does not take any steps to doing it. She still has a sense of life other than Old Jiko, but what is it? If she hates her life so much and she plans to end it so soon, why not end it then and get it over with? My answer, is that she still has life in her that she is not ready to get rid of yet, but I have no idea what it is.

Ruth is a different kind of life. Ruth finds life in this journal of Nao. There is so much going on in this journal that Ruth finds life in it and gets consumed by all the words Naoko has written in it. She somehow merges her life to this life in the journal and things begin to happen. For instance, foreign birds make it to the island, the watch begins to start ticking again, and Ruth somehow finds the professor who holds the answers to her questions. Nao’s depressing life is somehow giving Ruth a little bit of life. Magic or coincidence?

8. Death is a prominent theme in the book. The classmates bullying Nao stage her mock funeral; Haruki #1 writes of his decision to be a pilot as a means of choosing his method of dying; Nao’s father attempts suicide; Jiko dies of old age. Since death is inevitable, what do you think Ozeki is saying about life by creating unique situations about death? 

For my final Ozeki post, I have decided to use this question since it works with my plan to choose death as my final theme of the book. It is very clear that death is inevitable in both the book and in real life. How the book translates how it takes us, I think that Ozeki is trying to tell us that there are many ways to “die.” We all know that. But what I am taking away from this is the fact that someone can still be alive.

First, I would like to start off with Old Jiko. She is 104 years old and she lives in a temple. She does not do fun and outgoing things like a typical person would do. She stays in a temple, prays a lot, does not travel regularly, and she can hardly see. Some people can say that Jiko’s life is not very lively. Some can say that that is not life at all; however, Jiko is content, Nao loves her and everything that Jiko does is enough for herself. I’m sure some people can say that Jiko had “died” the moment she decided to be a monk. Or, in Nao’s case, someone can say that she died just on old age. The point is, death or something that is dead, does not mean it is not alive.

On a more clear note, we can look at Nao’s father and her great-uncle, Haruki #1. Haruki #1′s diary reads that he is obviously unhappy with his decision to join in the war. His letter reads him off as already being dead. He is still alive and breathing (at the time of the note) but cannot feel anything other than depression; thus, his decision to end his life the way he chose was born. Nao’s father was practically the same way. He created a program that ended up being used for war. This upset him and made him feel completely awful. It affected him so much that he was practically dead inside and tried to end his life multiple times.

Lastly, I think Nao’s the allegory for most humans. Nao is on the brink of debating whether or not she is alive or dead. Nao has been bullied, she had a mock funeral, she almost got raped, and her father is “pathetic.” Jiko was the only thing that Nao had that she had felt happy about. Back to my point about this fine line of life and death and Nao, she had already explained in her diary that she practically was dead. She was dead to her classmates and her teacher; but when she saw that the video had all these hits she felt proud. She excited that all these people are seeing HER die. But, she died, so what did it matter to her? She ends up doing this prostitution act and feels non chalant about it, even after the bathroom rape scene. Overall, I think Nao bounces back between feeling alive and feeling dead inside, just like anybody in the real world.

Reading further into the book I can see how communication plays a major theme. I think communcation is shown obviously in the book and in a hidden, magical sort of way. I think it plays an obvious part when Oliver and Ruth talk, when Ruth reads Nao’s diary, when Nao talks to her father, and so on. So in the book, Nao talks about how she taught Jiko how to text so she can talk to her whenever she need/wants to. I found that as an obvious means of communication, also communication through technology. Ruth also encounters technological communication with an email she sends out about Harry.

There is also Nao’s diary, another kind of communation. I think it had both a physical sort of communication as well as the magical sort. As Ruth reads on with Nao’s diary, things in her real time, or world starts happening. These crows begin to show up, Ruth cannot find anything about Nao, and Ruth somehow gets emotionally invested with Nao’s life. There is this magic joy and pain in reading Nao’s diary,which I think is pretty magical that a few words can enchant someone.

Another thing I find a strong source of communication is dreams. Dreams in the book sort of represent this communication between both Nao and Ruth’s worlds. Ruth has these dreams with Jiko in them and Nao has this dream with Reiko. First, Nao has this dream with Reiko and stabbing her in the eye, Reiko the next day shows up with an eye patch on. Coincidence? I think that it might not be since there was no real explanation about it and what are the odds? Also, when Ruth has dreams about Old Jiko, strange things then began to take place later in the book.

Then, Haruki #1′s letter that magically shows up in the box. Some weird communication between magic and real life ends up bringing Haruki #1′s own hand written letter about the war. The magic that happens between these modes of communication brings Ruth to different assumptions of Nao’s diary and family history. Haruki #1′s note clarified many things for Ruth and eventually, Nao’s family. Ruth has a dream with Nao’s father, in which she talks to him about his suicide and his daughter. How strange to have a dream about someone you never met. It is said that you can see some random stranger and they can end up in your dream, but how strange that she new that this random stranger in her dream would represent Nao’s father. Lastly, as both the diary and magic have their ways of communicating with Ruth, somehow, the diary pages that were once written in have somehow gone blank for a night then somehow end up having been written in again. How? When? and Why? I guess that part had been up to the reader.

In class we went over a few themes of place, time, death, environment, and communication. I think loss is a theme that has definitely kept my attention. There are many instances in the book where I feel Nao and Ruth both somehow get these feelings of loss or being lost themselves.

First, let’s start with Naoko. I feel like Nao has lost her sense of reality around her. I say this because most of what Nao writes has some kind of imagination implanted into it or illusion she’s come up with. For instance, her first incident was when she talked about the otaku salesman staring at her in the cafe and she comes up with this perfectly schemed rape plan. I feel like was very detailed as if she knew what tortue like that would feel like for the first few pages of her diary. Another example would be her loss of self in a very symbolic way. Another example would be when she gets Daisuke to give her the card that’s been going around school. Throughout the book Nao seems to be willing to take whatever bullying comes her way and does not stand up for herself; however, at this point she takes matters into her own hands and almost kills Daisuke. “I took the knife and pressed the blade against his throat…Time slowed down, and each moment unfolded into a future filled with infinite possibilities. It would be so easy. Slice the artery and watch the red blood spurt and stain the ground…My fist, gripping the knife, looked like it meant business, and my artm felt strong and powerful, too. I liked that” (120).  Here, we have the first sense of Nao ever feeling strong on her own and she somewhat is standing up for herself. What I am not sure about is if this is Naoko’s loss of self of who she  was before this incident or if the whole time we were reading that was her loss of self.

Now Ruth (hah, get it?), I feel like Ruth has lost herself into Nao’s life. She finds herself overly involved in this girl’s life that she constantly thinks about it, until she’ll finish it. “She rubbed her hands up and down across her face, kneading her temples and pressing her fingers into her eye sockets. Why did it matter so much? But it did. She needed to know if Nao was dead or alive. She was searching for a body” (131). Ruth has been consumed by Nao’s feelings in a book. Also, I feel as if Ruth has been feeling like she’s at a loss with place. She takes the barnacles that were on the package to get them looked at and has this on going encounter with crows, both of which were not noticed or seen before.