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Motif
Explanation and Analysis—Lightning:
Lightning is a recurring motif that is linked to the supernatural and can be read to represent improbable change. Lightning and thunderstorms appear when Hoshino opens the entrance stone; Kafka’s father was struck by lightning years ago before becoming a sculptor, possibly evidencing his transformation into Johnnie Walker; Miss Saeki interviewed people who were struck by lightning and wrote a book on it. Only after being struck by lightning did Kafka's father begin to focus seriously on his career as a sculptor:
Suddenly, completely out of nowhere, I remember my father talking about how he’d once been struck by lightning. He didn’t tell me himself—I’d read about it in an interview in a magazine. When he was a student in art college, he had a part-time job as a caddy at a golf course. One day he was following his golfer around the course when the sky suddenly changed color and a huge thunderstorm crashed down on them.
Lightning is associated with the supernatural. The lightning that stuck Koichi Tamura may have been a result of Miss Saeki's originally opening the stone. It could have been a catalyst that connected him to Johnnie Walker, who seems to be simultaneously a separate entity from him but also one and the same.
More broadly, being struck by lightning seems to represent the establishment of a connection to the supernatural world. This becomes clear when Kafka, speaking with complete confidence of the supernatural world that has overlapped his and Miss Saeki's lives, tells Miss Saeki how they are connected:
You tell her she must know who you are. I’m Kafka on the Shore, you say. Your lover—and your son. The boy named Crow. And the two of us can’t be free. We’re caught up in a whirlpool, pulled beyond time. Somewhere, we were struck by lightning. But not the kind of lightning you can see or hear.
Lightning is not, in this case, literal lightning, but instead metaphorically calls on associations with supernatural events.
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