10 Common Themes Of Murakami Novels - And What They Mean

If you've ever read something by Murakami, it's likely that, at some point or another, one of the characters will go down a well.

In Killing Commendatore, a mysterious ringing bell draws our two main characters to a hidden well in the mountains; a place both will ultimately spend some time alone. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, too, features a soldier left in a well to die and an abandoned well where the main character often goes to think.

Both thoughtful and strange, these wells are as quintessentially Murakami as anything else he includes in his novels. However, there's a reason why the author has a fascination with wells.

As expressed in an interview with The Guardian, one of the acclaimed author's dreams is to sit at the bottom of a well. "I thought: it’s fun to write a novel," he states, "you can be anything! So I thought: I can sit at the bottom of a well, isolated."

In another interview with The New Yorker, Murakami sheds more light on this peculiar dream. Telling of a well near where he grew up and a short story about a well he loved, wells are yet another of the inspirations that has captured his imagination.