The Seventh Man by Haruki Murakami Analysis Essay Example

Sometimes fear takes a hold of a person and doesn’t let go. In the Seventh Man, fear took ahold of the narrator, which resulted in the death of his best friend. This event left him with a life filled with guilt. The narrator should forgive himself for his failure to save K when he was a child.

“Oh, the fear is there, all right. It comes to us in many forms at different times and overwhelms us. But the most frightening thing we can do at such times is to turn our backs on it, to close our eyes. For then we take the most precious thing inside us and surrender it to something else.” You see, this is what happened to the narrator when a wave took ahold of K. The narrator and K had been close friends for a long portion of their lives. They did almost everything together, but one stormy night changed both of their lives forever. That night the narrator had tried to call out to his friend to save him from the upcoming wave, but fear had stolen his voice. Once he was finally able to call out, the wave had already swallowed his friend. This event happened when the narrator was just a child, but it affected him for most of his life. The narrator blamed himself for the death even though the death was not his fault. He should not be blamed for an event that happened when he was a fear filled child.

The narrator did almost anything he could to run from the traumatic event. He even convinced his parents to let him move to another state. After his friend died, he was filled with a guilt for a lifetime. He eventually went back to his hometown and found watercolors that K had painted. These paintings became a sort of therapy for the narrator, and he was able to overcome the fear that was put into him. He was able to visit the ocean where K died without being filled with guilt. He should forgive himself because what happens happens and you can’t go back in life to fix it. You can only go forward. 

Some people argue that the narrator could have called out to save K, but fear stopped him from doing so. Sometimes fear takes hold of a person and doesn’t allow them to think straight. In paragraph 5 the narrator says this about the wave, “… it swallowed everything that mattered most to me and swept it off to another world. I took years to find it again and to recover from the experience…” This shows that the narrator was able to take back what fear had stolen. He was able to come to peace with the event in the end, and that is all that matters.

In the end, the narrator should forgive himself because fear was the real reason for K’s death. He should not blame himself for a death that wasn’t his fault.