Where My Characters Come From by Haruki Murakami

Table of Contents

Introduction
Where Characters Come From
Conclusion
Work Cited

Introduction

Murakami, in his article Where My Characters Come From, gives an overview of how he chooses the characters in his novel and what motivates the choices of characters (2). Murakamis purpose is to explain how he develops his characters over time in his writing career and how the characters choices influence the flow of the stories in the novels. The article primarily targets his critics and fans; he tries to show how the characters in his novels are not developed from real-life experiences but from imaginary scenarios. The main idea in the article is that the novel is creating the novelist as he continues creating the novel (Murakami 4). Therefore, as the author writes his story, the characters will influence the storys turn.

Where Characters Come From

Haruki Murakami does not use real people as its characters because he feels the person he may use may notice. Characters who appear in Murakamis novels emerge from the story slowly as they develop as the story progresses into real overall characters of a person (Murakami 2). He names the process of creating these characters the automatic dwarf, which he compares to driving stick-shift cars. In order to write novels, you will need to read many books and know many people to write about them. The author enjoys writing novels because he can become anybody he wants to be. In his early years of writing, Murakami used the first person and occasionally wrote short stories in the third person (6).

Change in how he depicts his characters in the novels came with time though it took time. Murakami assumes that characters are alive, break free from the writers control, and act independently. The characters begin to act independently and shape the novel story as the writer explores the characters lives (Murakami 12). Murakami can discover himself as he lives on the characters he writes about, depending on the form thy takes.

Conclusion

I always believe that writers keenly observe the universe and the people as much as Murakami states that the characters in his novels are not based on real people but rather his imagination. I have observed that novel characters are always alive in a way; they take the form and behavior of certain people in our society. Therefore, I cannot entirely agree with these ideas because the characters in stories usually resemble real human beings; for a novelist to give these novel characters a sense of humanity, whether a protagonist or an antagonist, he must have real-life knowledge of how these people should act. The characters and their behavior will influence a story in the novels.

The knowledge is usually driven by real-life human experiences of how people behave and act to reflect their character traits. Nevertheless, there are also chances that the characters may be original and seem to be based on people but are entirely not.