Possible Inspiration: Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground

     by Nobel Chan 

    In Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase, the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky is mentioned twice up to the nineteenth chapter. His name first appears in one of the Rat's letters, where the Rat imagines himself in the nineteenth century and ponders writing better novels, but "maybe not your Dostoevsky" (Murakami 89). A few chapters later the narrator meets up with the strange man, who mentions he has "high regard for Dostoevsky" as a rare genius whose "memory extend[s] back to primal chaos" (Murakami 133). The recurrence of Dostoevsky's name suggests a significance beyond casual reference; Murakami has listed Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov as an indispensable novel to him as a writer, showing that he takes influence from the author's works. One such work Murakami may have taken inspiration from is Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky's 1864 novella about a man who isolates himself and writes about his reasons for doing so. The novella explores the absurdities of life, pain, and identity, themes which potentially echo throughout A Wild Sheep Chase.

     In the Rat's first letter where he mentions Dostoevsky, he talks about changing his name and identity every time he enters a town: "I've got a string of names and identities like you wouldn't believe. At times I forget what I was like originally" (Murakami 90). The Rat struggles to maintain his identity, a struggle paralleled by the Underground Man from Notes from Underground. The Underground Man claims that an intelligent person cannot have a definite character because they are hyper-aware of contradictions within themselves and the world, negating any kind of self-identification (Dostoevsky Chapter I). This barrier to self-identification manifests in the Underground Man's lack of a name, with 'Underground Man' being an epithet given to him by critics. Namelessness appears prominently in Murakami's text as well, with all of the characters, not just the narrator Boku, having no name. Murakami may have rendered his narrators and characters nameless as a nod to the Underground Man, since namelessness was not a convention of the hardboiled detective fiction genre that otherwise permeates the novel. More parallels to the Underground Man can be seen in the Rat's second letter, where the Rat describes how isolated he is, "sealed off in the mountains" (Murakami 95). The letter's stream-of-consciousness style and nihilistic undertones ("my whole life up to now has been nothing but one big repetition of this after another") is heavily reminiscent of the Underground Man's existentialist ramblings, with both characters relieving their profound isolation through writing (Murakami 95).  The Rat clarifies that he's "not feeling sorry" for himself, "it only sounds that way when [he] write[s] it down," paralleling the way the Underground Man's ramblings can come off to readers as self-pity (Murakami 95-6). In these two letters the Rat shares many elements with the Underground Man, including his isolation, parts of his writing style, and his struggles with identity.

    The connection between the strange man and Notes from Underground stems from his discussion of Will. Explaining to Boku the idea of Will, the strange man says that "individual cognition and evolutionary continuity[] lose their meaning, language loses meaning" (Murakami 141). Meaning plays a big role in nihilism which states that life has no inherent meaning, a stance that the Underground Man takes in Notes from Underground. The strange man speaks about existing "simply as chaos," which links back to him calling Dostoevsky a genius whose "memory extend[s] back to primal chaos," suggesting that something in Dostoevsky's works embodies the notion of Will (Murakami 141, 133). In one passage from Notes from Underground, the Underground Man ruminates on humanity's love for "destruction and chaos," pondering whether mankind leaves things unfinished because they fear completion and therefore love the journey more than the destination (Dostoevsky Chapter IX). This passage goes on to say that mankind abandons their constructed buildings for animals such as ants and "sheep," connecting sheep to chaos (Dostoevsky Chapter IX). In both works the conceptions of chaos are difficult to understand, and the mention of sheep in the Dostoevsky passage may be an indicator that Murakami did in fact take inspiration from Notes from Underground. However, the way the strange man describes chaos does not exactly line up with the Underground Man's interpretation of the concept, so perhaps the sheep was a coincidence. Either way, A Wild Sheep Chase definitely shares some similarities with Notes from Underground, whether intentional or not. 

Free online version of Notes from Underground: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/600/600-h/600-h.htm#chap00

The intricate symbolization of money and corruption in Chandler's The Long Goodbye

    In Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye a theme that is noticeably repeated in his chapters is the distinctions between the worlds of high class and low class. Marlow gets the chance to coincidentally enter into this labyrinth of the elite through Terry Lenox and as he rolls deeper into this new discovered world he meets a man that is highly influential even among the high class, Harlan Potter, Sylvia Lenox’s father. However, it is clear that the distinction between the two worlds in this story is an all-round illusion created, not by the nobleness of the high class characters, but instead by masking their true ugliness through the money and reputation constructed with that money. We can see this through Terry’s description of Sylvia’s father where he says “Harlan Potter is a cold hearted son of a bitch. All Victorian dignity on the outside. Inside he's as ruthless as a Gestapo thug” (Chandler 24).

    As the story progresses our main protagonist’s high conviction in his own moral compass motivates and aimless belief in the justice system, makes his struggle even more difficult upon his encounter with the corrupt police force. Once Marlow is in jail due to his slight rebellion against telling the police force about Terry, lawyer Sewell Endicott enlightens the readers with the reality about the justice system.“The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer”(Chandler 56). As we further discover, the “right buttons” (56) that he seems to be talking about are the monetary and reputational bonuses that the elite can use to get away from facing justice.

    I believe that the author further plays on this theme by emphasizing more intricate details such as with the repetitive use of the color green to symbolize money and eliteness. He names one of the police officers interrogating Marlow, Green, which makes his fight against him seem almost like a larger battle between justice and corruption caused by money and the rich. It is interesting to also note that we later get hints that Green is possibly not really part of the lower class after being revealed that he has “four children and a rose garden” (47).

The other interesting implementation of the color green that seems even more unrevealed is the use and the symbolism of “eucalyptus trees” (6, 27, 118) in the story. Marlow seems to always find eucalyptus trees and while at first it may seem like a coincidence, the repetitive mention of eucalyptus whenever he is around private mansions of sorts feels almost intentional. Upon further research, I found that the nature behind the eucalyptus tree is not only intriguing but may be even more symbolic for the character’s dislike of the corruption that money brings to the justice system. Eucalyptus tree roots can in fact pilfer gold from the ore deposits in the soil, but as the gold is seemingly deadly to the roots the tree transports the gold into its leaves in turn explaining why the leaves can be found to be highly poisonous. It is almost as if there is a correlation between Marlow’s mention of the tree due to its connection to money and toxicity that this peculiar tree represents. I am intrigued to see whether and how this symbolisation will repeat itself as we finish the book.

by Angelina Not (Lina)