«What can you say about the situation described in Norwegian Wood?”

“This bird had flown”

The situation takes place in an unknown girl’s room. They’re sitting in her room, talking and drinking wine through the night. When the night came to an end, she had to go to bed. He then went on to sleep in the bathtub, not in her bed. The next morning he woke up alone.

The first thing that popped up in my head was that the person talking was having an affair with another girl. But then I thought about it, and to have an affair, you’ve got to do physical things to each other. He slept in the bath, which indicates that she wanted him to sleep there, and not in her bedroom. She was also gone when he woke up. That means that she most likely did not want to get physical with him, hence it not being an affair.

“Which of these two characters seems to be the most eager or keen about this meeting?”

The male person was with no doubt the one that wanted to keep on going. Even though she asked him to stay, that doesn’t necessary mean that she was the most eager to continue the event. It just seems as that the female was the one making excuses: “She told me she worked in the morning”. He obviously accepted the fact that she did not want him to stay any longer: “Crawled off to sleep in the bath.”

“Do you find any humoristic elements here? Where? Why?”

I thought the fact that this story reflects on a very common real situation was quite entertaining. I don’t think there is a correct answer here, and I personally did not think anything was “funny”. I thought the fact that Norwegian Wood was completely out of context was quite amusing. It’s truly a mystery how the title became what it is.  

How do the lyric end? How do you interpret the last lines?

“So, I lit a fire, isn’t it good, Norwegian Wood.”

The song really does stop abruptly, you’d think that you might get a better explanation later on in the song, but that’s unfortunately not the case. It’s hard to “analyse” it, because the last two words I never really understood. Does it have a deeper meaning than that he just lit a fire using Norwegian Wood? Is Norwegian Wood a metaphor for something like marijuana? I don’t know.