The Seventh Man The saying, “you can never go home again” relates to the narrator in “The Seventh Man” by Haruki Marukami. In the story the narrator leaves his hometown and comes back a different person, and that is exactly what the saying means. Tragic events can have an impact on the rest of people’s lives. This proves to be true in “The Seventh Man”. In the story, the narrator has to deal with the loss of his best friend. His loss has a lasting impact on him. For a great deal of his life, this tragic event haunts the narrator, but he resolves his inner conflict by revisiting his hometown. In the story the narrator has a friend that he is protective of and cares for greatly. One day in September, a great typhoon hit. His hometown had closed …show more content…
He also was in shock. Even after he had recovered physically, he had not recovered mentally. The tragedy the narrator experienced kept him from living a normal life. The narrator could always picture K. in the wave, he says, “K. was always there, lying in the wave tip, grinning at me, his hand outstretched, beckoning. I couldn’t get that picture out of my mind” (365). The narrator could also see K. in his dreams, having two reoccurring nightmares about him. One of the nightmares is simply about K. pulling him into the wave. The other, was about the narrator enjoying a relaxing swim when K. grabs his ankle and pulls him under, the narrator describes the wave by saying, “Then, all of a sudden, someone grabs my right leg. I feel an ice-cold grip on my ankle. It’s strong, too strong to shake off. I’m being dragged down under the surface. I see K.’s face there” (365). Before losing his best friend to the large wave the narrator enjoys the water, but after he has a fear of even going near it. At the end of the year the narrator convinces his parents to let him move to another town. The narrator could not stand living so close to the beach where he lost his friend. He moved to Nagano Province with his father’s family in a mountain village near Komoro. After he leaves he stopped having the nightmares, but he could not forget what happened. When on the verge of forgetting he would have a nightmare just to …show more content…
had done and places they went. The narrator then wondered if his belief that K. was angry with him was true, and he then realizes that K. was never mad at him; K. was his best friend. The narrator now knew he must go back to his hometown. When the narrator went back his father had died of cancer and his family no longer owned the house he lived in, the house was not even there anymore. The hometown he remembered from his child was no longer the same. The narrator says, “I did not find the same quiet, little seaside town that I had remembered. An industrial city had sprung up nearby during the rapid development of the Sixties, bringing great changes to the landscape” (367). When revisiting his hometown the narrator goes to the beach where K. was last seen. When the narrator goes to the beach his inner conflict is resolved, going to the exact place it happened, something he feared doing was what cured him. The narrator says, “And then I realized that the deep darkness inside me had vanished. Suddenly. As suddenly as it had come. I raised myself from the sand, and, without bothering to take off my shoes or roll up my cuffs, walked into the surf and let the waves lap at my ankles”(369). Then the narrator mentions how all the fears he had in the past had left him, he says, “There was no longer anything for me to fear. Those days were gone. I stopped having my