Melancholy Isn't Depth: Why Norwegian Wood Left Me Cold
When I picked up Norwegian Wood, I expected a thoughtful, aching meditation on love, grief, and growing up. What I found instead was a novel draped in poetic prose but hollow at its core, filled with emotionally stunted characters, particularly the male lead, and a deeply problematic portrayal of women. The book wraps itself in sadness like a warm coat and assumes that’s enough to mean something. But once I peeled back the layers, I realized: melancholy is not the same as depth.
At first glance, Toru Watanabe is framed as the quintessential tragic protagonist: quiet, observant, grieving. The kind of man who listens to classical music, reads literature, and wanders through Tokyo as if carrying the weight of the world. The story tries so hard to convince us that Toru is a sensitive, quiet, introspective guy weighed down by the deaths and mental struggles around him. But when you really look at his actions, it becomes clear: Toru is not a victim of grief. He’s a man who uses grief as an excuse to avoid accountability.
He claims to love Naoko, a girl fragile from the trauma of losing her boyfriend Kizuki (Toru’s best friend). Yet Toru has no issue sleeping with other women while she is emotionally unraveling in a sanatorium. He offers no real comfort, no strength, no clarity; only presence. And even that is inconsistent.
Later, he professes love for Midori, another emotionally complex character, yet fails to be present for her either. When Naoko dies, Toru goes emotionally cold and doesn’t even put effort into the relationship with Midori. His love feels convenient, not sincere. Toru lacks self-respect, self-control, and most of all, emotional integrity. He drifts through life passively, hurting people, and the novel tries to make us feel sorry for him. I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Naoko herself, though a victim of tragedy, becomes a tool in Toru’s narrative. She’s grieving, broken, and was unable to "open up" to Kizuki, the boy she apparently loved with her whole heart. But then she shares her body with Toru. While the book wants to portray this as a moment of connection, it felt wrong, almost like her vulnerability was exploited by the narrative to show Toru as a man who women can "open up to". It diminished her grief, her boundaries, and her love for Kizuki in a way I couldn’t accept.
What made it worse was the complete lack of guilt or acknowledgment from either Toru or Naoko regarding Kizuki. They sleep together with no real introspection, no emotional turmoil about betraying the memory of someone who meant the world to both of them. Naoko is just as responsible in this dynamic. Lying with her deceased boyfriend’s best friend not only felt unjustified, but almost casually brushed aside. It made it harder to empathize with her, not because she was grieving, but because the narrative refused to explore that grief with the gravity it deserved. Her trauma, while central to the plot, is never truly explored in depth. It feels shallow and used merely as a device to push Toru’s story forward.
Reiko, her roommate at the sanatorium, also ends up being written in an unsettling way. We discover she was accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old student (a fact the book tries to frame as complex or grey), yet she’s portrayed mostly as wise and warm, with a tragic past. That’s not nuance, that’s narrative negligence.
And then we come to Midori. She could have been a great character. She’s bold, assertive, funny, and open about her desires. But instead, she ends up becoming a caricature, the classic “I’m not like other girls” trope. Her sexual openness isn’t a problem, but the way she speaks, almost cartoonishly quirky and always performing, feels like she was written by someone who’s never truly listened to a woman. She openly flirts with Toru despite being in a relationship, and it’s played off as edgy or cool rather than emotionally confusing and selfish.
Toru never respects Midori’s emotional vulnerability. He strings her along, disappears when she needs him most, and still expects her to be waiting. When she gives him a choice, to be with her fully, he hesitates, not because he’s torn but because he’s emotionally hollow.
And then there’s Nagasawa, the embodiment of male arrogance. He cheats on his girlfriend Hatsumi repeatedly, talks about women like trophies, and still believes he’s a genius above moral codes. Toru not only befriends him but admires him. He joins him in “picking up girls,” sleeps with them, and calls it just another night. It’s sickening.
Hatsumi, Nagasawa’s girlfriend, is perhaps the most tragic of all, not just in her story but in how she’s written. She stays with a man who humiliates her, quietly accepts his infidelity, and ultimately fades into a tragic suicide. But even then, the novel uses her death not as a turning point, but as another sad song in Toru’s playlist of life. She’s not honored. She’s absorbed into the atmosphere.
Sex, in this novel, is treated not as connection or love but as solution and escape. Characters don’t talk, don’t fight, don’t resolve. They just have sex. As if that can cure grief, heal betrayal, erase trauma. I found that deeply disturbing. It reduced intimacy to a tool and robbed the characters of emotional depth.
And worst of all, the novel lacks a real message. It doesn’t feel like it’s leading toward anything. It wallows in sadness without offering insight. It romanticizes dysfunction and calls it honesty. Characters don’t grow, they spiral. And readers are expected to be moved just because it’s melancholic. But grief isn’t meaningful just because it exists.
In the end, Norwegian Wood wasn’t a story about healing. It was a story about people avoiding healing and calling that sadness. The women are used, romanticized, or erased. The men are idolized for doing the bare minimum. And Toru? He’s not a tragic hero. He’s a man who left wreckage behind and kept walking. I refuse to romanticize that.
