Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of
Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
What is the world’s ethos (the guiding beliefs or ideals that
characterize the world)?
In Haruki Murakami’s Colorless, the world’s ethos is almost split. The book takes place in a very
real-world location and is very easy to believe. We established that the story
is a slice of life type of story, which can be appealing or not. Either way, I
found this question interesting. With the thought that this is a story in mind,
Tsukuru Tazaki had his own special ethos. I say this because there are the
ethoses of the world that we live in (the same that Tsukuru Tazaki lives in)
compared to those that he believes in. I’m not saying that he does not follow
the ones that allow society to function (crime is bad, hard work reaps benefits
etc), but he has his own that creates his own little world.
His
core ethos is focused on family names and their significance as well as his
perceptions of others on him. In other words, he cares too much about what
others are thinking. The whole book he whines about being colorless and because
all of his friends have colors in their names, they obviously have more significance
than he does. For some reason, he puts these people who coincidentally have
colors on pedestals. Then because he does not have a color in his name, he
automatically assumes that he is lesser than his friends and that his friends
believe this just as steadfast as he does. His name may not be a color, but his
name does mean builder/creator. This comparison is just so silly and childish,
it’s sad. He is stuck in this high school mentality of ‘I am the one left out
without a color, so obviously I’m not as good as them,’ when his own name means
creation. This mentality is held on so tight that when his friends leave him,
he accepts it without argument or question and is miserable for a good portion
of his life. Then upon re-meeting his friends, he discovers how much they truly
think of him and how amazing they thought he was.
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