Volume V Special Issue III August 2025

Name of Author : Bethshan R P, Dr. A Linda Primlyn

Title of the paper : Hollow Men, Vanishing Women: Silence, Grief, and the Self in Haruki Murakamis The WindUp Bird Chronicle, South of the Border, West of the Sun and Norwegian Wood

Abstract: This research on Haruki Murakamis The WindUp Bird Chronicle, South of the Border, West of the Sun and Norwegian Wood attempts to explore how the disappearance of women characters in his novels initiates a deep process of emotional reckoning in the male protagonists. It focuses on psychoanalytic theory, primarily the Lacanian concept of the lack and the fragmented self, to examine how absence acts as a psychological force rather than being present in shaping ones identity. The protagonists of three novels, Toru Okada, Hajime and Toru Watanabe are examined as men who are caught in the inertia of emotional detachment, forced into introspection by the disappearance of women central to their sense of stability. This paper argues that the disappearance of women becomes the catalyst for confronting unspoken grief, suppressed trauma, and the quiet implosion of the self rather than signifying as loss. Murakamis narrative technique resists resolution and suggests that healing is not about recovery or closure, but about learning to inhabit ones emotional hollowness with honesty and endurance.

Keywords : Emotional detachment, Psychological breakdown, Trauma, Silence, Selftherapy.

DOI :

Page Number : 50-53