In Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The City and Its Uncertain Walls, the separated shadow is the part of the self that reminds you not to lose your passion, creativity and emotions to work.
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- Sad goodbye to the shadow
Salih read Hard-Boiled Wonderland in winter and was left sad and melancholic by the shadow's hard goodbye at the end. Tamir reads the passage aloud and Salih recalls the narrator staring at…
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The shadow is something that reminds you to not lose yourself into work, losing your passion and creativity, losing your emotions.
This is my world. The wall is here to hold me in. The river flows through me. The smoke is me burning.
Who are we if we don't have any creativity or emotions inside our heads?
- Don't trade your emotions for work
Murakami's own life (writing, running, an unscheduled rest of the day) embodies the shadow's message: never lose your creativity or emotions to work; do what you love.