The authors of the floating world: The concept of death in Ishiguro's a Pale View of Hills and Murakami's Norwegian wood

In his first novel, A Pale View of Hills (1982), Kazuo Ishiguro draws upon post-World War II, trauma, self-deception, guilt and repression through a middle-aged Japanese woman. Whereas Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood (1987) is a nostalgic coming of age story in the 60's Japan which centres around love triangles, loss and sexuality. The-first-person narrative is used in a diary-like manner in these novels. Through the manifestation of repressed memories, both Tōru and Etsuko take the reader on a journey in the past. Although in Norwegian Wood, the characters are surrounded by death, Etsuko's daughter is the only character who commits suicide in A Pale View of Hills. However, both novels share common themes and binary oppositions such as life/death, real/unreal, past/present, East/West and Japaneseness/Englishness. This thesis aims to analyse the concept of death in the selected novels of two contemporary authors of English and Japanese literature through the methodology of comparative reading. The thesis will focus on the similarities and differences of how characters mourn the death of their loved ones along with Ishiguro and Murakami's approaches to death by applying Freudian psychoanalysis. Freud's 1917 essay Mourning and Melancholia will be used in the interpretation of Tōru and Etsuko's coping mechanisms. By applying these discoveries, a comparative reading of A Pale View of Hills and Norwegian Wood will take place. Finally, the thesis will evaluate the ambiguous endings of the novels, as well as mourning process of the characters. Keywords: Freudian psychoanalysis, defence mechanisms, mourning, melancholia, death