Wild Sheep Chase

 After finishing "The Long Goodbye" and "The Wild Sheep Chase" in full I have been thinking about the similarities between the two and a lot about "Heart of Darkness".  I think that while Murakami used a lot of literary techniques that Chandler used, the overarching journey is much more similar to Conrad's book. Murakami definitely references both of these two authors I think as a way of crediting them for the inspiration behind his writings. 

Like Chandler, Murakami pieces together his own short stories to make the longer novel as we discussed in class. He also uses a similar style of character description. There is a lot of focus on physical details such as facial features, bodies, clothes, jewelry, and more. They both use these descriptions to show an image that can be immediately conjured based on their physical appearance. This stood out to me as it is quite an almost outdated technique based on stereotypes that Chandler often employs. Murakami seems like he is using a more modern version of this technique however I think this can be due to the homogeneity of all of the characters being Japanese. Hints of the stereotypes can still be seen in the way Murakami describes women and the Ainu guide. This is in particular strong for Boku's girlfriend who is often reduced to nothing but her ears as a synecdoche. The other thing that Murakami employs that I felt was strongly reminiscent of Chandler is the narrative voice of Marlowe and Boku. However, I do not see these characters themselves as similar, just the way that they narrate. Marlowe is a very physical character who engages in fights in a typical hard-boiled detective fashion while Boku does not. In this way, Boku is almost more similar to the classic detectives from the golden age such as Holmes or Poirot. Their narrations are similar in that the interlacing of stream of consciousness, descriptions, and dialogue follow very similar patterns. I feel that if you were to put Marlowe into a Wild Sheep Chase, he would engage in similar conversations with the characters he interacts with, think of similar logical next steps, and draw similar conclusions. Overall, they are both very obviously from a male point of view and made for the male audience. 

There are so many similarities between the journey in "Heart of Darkness" and "The Wild Sheep Chase". (I wasn't in class so I'm not sure if this was already discussed). It felt almost like Murakami took a few of the concepts in stories he already had and looked for a template to put it in and landed on "Heart of Darkness". This is especially prominent in the foreign land with hints of enigmatic forces that bend the rules of time and space, and the metamorphosis of the lost friend. 

Celine Yuan