Haruki Murakami's Tsukuru Tazaki

In Haruki Murakami's story Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of pilgrimage he has introduced his audience to a character who lives in a traditional Japanese world with 

traditional Japanese values. However Tsukuru has undergone a traumatic experience when his four high school friends that he was closest to mysteriously cut him out of their lives. To protect himself emotionally and mentally Tsukuru closes himself from

the world and withdraws into himself. He withdraws from his family seldom visiting 

them in his hometown and decides not to pursue with his friends the reason for their shunning him. The world that Murakami creates for Tsukuru floats in and out of 

different timelines and creates a dreamlike effect that leaves the reader at times

unsure what is real or just fantasy. This gives the reader a vivid understanding of the

conflict and emotional pain that Tsukuru is facing. Tsukuru is fortunate enough to meet a woman who he makes an emotional connection with who convinces him he 

must face the friends who shunned him and deal with the emotional pain and baggage he has been avoiding. Tsukuru decides to take a risk and talk to his friends and is

brought back to reality with the discovery that he had done nothing wrong at all. He was shunned in an attempt to protect someone else. Tsukuru realizes that his world is one of reality and one in which he can seek happiness and love and a future. Murakami has taught his readers that often many of us hide behind our pain and put up emotional barriers but only by facing what has happened to us can we move forward into the future.