Seeking Theme Research Of Haruki Murakami’s “Youth Trilogy”

Haruki Murakami is one of the most influential and popular writer in Contemporary Japanese Literature, his works have been translated into several languages, such as English, French, German, Korean and Chinese, popular among the youth worldwide. Hear the Wind Sing, The Billiard Ball in 1973, A Wild Sheep Chase are called the youth trilogy. “Youth Trilogy” are Murakami’s debut works,compare with his other long stories, it’s still has a broad research space. Through methods of textual close reading, social and historical research, biography research, this paper mainly focused on studying the finding theme of the youth trilogy. This thesis is composed of three parts, namely the introduction, the body and the conclusion.The introduction part consists a brief description of Haruki Murakami′s works influence, summarize current research status about “Youth Trilogy”, based on which coming up with the mean of this paper and research route on finding the theme.The first chapter talk about relevance and similarity of “Youth Trilogy”, starting from three aspects, which are the plot, structure and language. First of all, the plot of three works kind like “concentric circle”, the grand background and minor background of the story are same, they share one protagonist and the theme of three works has continuity. Secondly, the structure of these three books are finding mode, the protagonist of the first story is finding faith of life, the second one is finding exit of lifetime, the third one is finding the root cause of modem Japan violent expansion; Finally, words the writer used in those three stories are “lightly Japanese”, well-knit and wit.Through text analysis, the second chapter discusses the finding theme of “ Youth Trilogy”. In Hear the Wind Sing, discussing about student strike which had just passed, point out why the protagonist get lost, then discuss the thing protagonist is finding. In The Billiard Ball in 1973, by analyzing the thing “I” and “Rat” are finding, “I” want to affirm self-value through finding dog, billiard ball; On “Rat” side, through analysis of lighthouse, sprite garden, make conclusion that “Rat” wants a life release. In A Wild Sheep Chase, by interpreting such as “Sir”, “Dr. Sheep”, “Rat”, “Secretary”, “Twelve Waterfall Town”, get conclusion that “the Sheep” is the source of modem Japan violent expansion.Chapter three discuss about what Murakami wants to find through “Youth Trilogy”. Inside this chapter, Murakami discussed relations between life and death, he thought that death is not opposite from life, it’s a part of life; Reality and unreality, Murakami used unreality to describe reality, reality contains unreality, makes the reality more real.In conclusion part, make a conclusion of finding theme, also, summarize how “Youth Trilogy” affects Murakami’s future creation.