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The Oedipal Myth in Haruki Murakami’s Kafka On The Shore | by Neo_Smith | Medium

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The following is a short essay I wrote for my Great Books class in which I tried to identify certain elements of the Oedipal myth from Oedipus Tyrannus prevalent in media such as film, television shows, and books. Murakami’s Kafka On The Shore came to mind and proved to be a work that overtly contained elements of the Oedipal myth. In hindsight, I found that there’s a lot more to be said about this novel (and perhaps Murakami’s whole oeuvre) than what I managed to write up in this short essay. Perhaps in the future, I shall return to this work and approach it more substantially. Though I can recall quite a few [books], especially those that have already been mentioned in the previous response before this present work, none have come to mind more readily than Kafka Tamura from Haruki Murakami’s novel Kafka on the Shore (2005). Though this response risks certain spoilers, I trust that the reader would rather be quite enticed enough by this exposition to want to read the novel, the plot o

6 min read Feb 3, 2025 -- The following is a short essay I wrote for my Great Books class in which I tried to identify certain elements of the Oedipal myth from Oedipus Tyrannus prevalent in media such as film, television shows, and books. Murakami’s Kafka On The Shore came to mind and proved to be a work that overtly contained elements of the Oedipal myth. In hindsight, I found that there’s a lot more to be said about this novel (and perhaps Murakami’s whole oeuvre) than what I managed to write up in this short essay. Perhaps in the future, I shall return to this work and approach it…

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