Reflecting upon A Wild Sheep Chase

 What begins as a story of a man trying to recover from his past traumas, including both a failed marriage and a deceased friend, quickly devolves into an almost aimless wandering. Through Boku, the reader is exposed to a world that is built on the absurd: Recollections of whale penises, irresistible ears, and sheepmen all contribute towards creating an environment that can be taken in any way but literally. Regardless, the characters that are directly exposed to such a world barely question what is happening around them. For them, being able to "kill ears,"  to endure sheep-caused blood cists, and to witness sheep-induced dreams is part of everyday life. 

Through all of these experiences, Boku remains unfazed. Still, the novel's protagonist is strongly attached to memories of his past life. Indubitably, the character's near-complete stoicness is primarily due to the fact that he cannot live in the present, as his mind is stuck to memories of the Rat, recollections of J's old bars, and doubts over his past wife for the entire duration of the novel. While Boku is trying to grasp the flow of time, countless characters around him repeatedly remind the protagonist of its passing. For instance, Boku's ex-wife says that "body cells replace themselves every month. Even at this moment." The Boss's assistant gives Boku a deadline of a month to find the sheep. The Rat winds up the old clock in the cabin. Even Boku's new girlfriend tells the protagonist "sometimes I get real lonely sleeping with you," implying that his head is not focused on the moment.

As the novel goes on, Boku's perception of time gradually becomes more distorted. His perception of his surroundings slowly becomes more unreliable, with Boku being unable to distinguish a town from a drawing. Days move slower until essentially coming to a stop during his visit to the cabin. Once time pauses, Boku is able to interact with the same characters that almost seemed non-existent throughout the rest of the novel. Boku's conversations with both the Sheepman and the Rat (which are later revealed to be the same character) are unique in the aspect that imaginary characters are able to interact with the physical world. The reader is well aware of the fact that these characters should not exist, or at least can only exist within the realm of Boku's imagination. The absurdity of characters like the Rat or the Sheepman derives from the fact that these "imaginary" characters can interact with the physical world. On the one hand, the Sheepman knocks on the door, drinks brandy, and kicks the mud off from his own boots. On the other, the Rat picks up cans of beer, opens the fridge, and even drinks the beer that he was handed. If these characters had only belonged to Boku's psyche, then they would not have been able to perform such actions. Still, they don't really exist, or at least not in the material world. The major indicator of said quality is the fact that the reflection of neither character can be seen in the antique mirror. 

Maybe the cabin is the bridge between those two worlds. Maybe Boku's travels were a way for him to grieve the Rat. Maybe Boku's distorted perception of time is a representation of his detachment from reality. Regardless of the interpretation given, it is difficult to assume that only one message can be attributed to Murakami's novel. The idea that a story always has to have a deeper meaning definitely has to be discarded: it's easy to come up with an interpretation for the story at the beginning of the novel and then exclusively pay attention to the evidence that backs it up while ignoring the rest. Nonetheless, there are some specific elements that I believe have a specific meaning. For instance, the sheep that took over the Boss was confirmed to have come to Japan alongside the other sheep. Thus, the sheep was not native to Japan and instead became an invasive specifies. On the same line of thought, numerous parallelisms were drawn between the life of a human and that of a sheep, as they both just follow the current and very rarely question their position in life. Keeping in mind that the protagonist never truly questions his surroundings and always goes along with whatever happens, Boku is also incredibly similar to the sheep that he is looking for.

Daniele

Names and Namelessness

    After finishing A Wild Sheep Chase, I was struck by the discussion of names that repeats throughout the book, as well as who and what Murakami chooses to name in the book itself. The idea of namelessness begins early in the book, with the description of the woman who died as “no one ever remembers her name either. Say, back then there was this girl who’d sleep with anyone” (5). As Boku and his girlfriend begin their wild sheep chase, there is the most notable discussion of the meaning of names with the chauffer, where they discuss why certain things have names while others do not. They argue whether names are solely for functionality or not, while the chauffer posits that they signify a lack of interchangeability. Through this ongoing discussion whether names really matter, Murakami highlights the fact that he has chosen not to name almost all his characters. This contrasts drastically from The Long Goodbye, where the plot hinges on the fact that Terry Lennox has multiple names for his many identities. Murakami instead goes the other direction, removing the need for names altogether in resolving his mystery. 

    The discussion surrounding names begins because the chauffer gives the cat Kipper his name, which is the only character in the entire book which we know a formal name for. There are many nicknames for characters, such as the Rat, J, the Sheep Professor, the Sheep Man, and the Boss. Yet, Murakami purposefully chooses not to name any characters. Boku argues that some objects don’t have names because they’re mass produced and that for purpose alone, numbers could be enough to identify. Yet Murakami does not give his characters numbers but gives them a simple descriptive nickname. By choosing not to give any of the characters names, Murakami seems to illustrate the ordinariness of these characters, even the prominent ones such as the Boss. This stands in stark contrast to the supernatural and extraordinary events of the book, which make it absurd to think that these events could happen to anyone. Yet, at its core, the character of Boku is quite interchangeable and it doesn’t really matter what his identity is, even if the events that occur to him in this book aren’t. 

    Murakami also often includes humor in these passages surrounding names, as this discussion about names ends with the chauffer pointing out that the main character, Boku, does have a name, to which he replies “’Right you are,’ I said. ‘I nearly forgot’” (182). Murakami is almost teasing the reader, because we, of course, don’t know his name so it is easy to forget that he has a name in the realm of the book. Again, referencing an earlier complaint about why they should give such an asshole of a territory of a name, he writes “the area fanned a sixty-degree arc between two mountains and was cut down the middle by a deep river gorge. An asshole of a terrain for sure” (236). It is in moments such as this, that it is clear that Murakami’s choice surrounding names is quite deliberate, as he pokes fun at the concept of giving certain people and things names while omitting others. 

    Despite the lack of naming of characters, Murakami takes great care in naming the locations that Boku and his girlfriend go, such as a strong emphasis on the naming of the Dolphin Hotel and the full history behind the naming of Junitaki. This emphasis on places rather than the people who are venturing there reinforces the common thread in many Murakami books- the other world. Yet, the people who are crossing towards that other realm are seemingly insignificant. In addition, I found the choice to name all the chapters to be an interesting one, since many authors choose not to name their chapters. Yet, Murakami, who does not name any of his characters in his book, chooses descriptive and unique chapter titles for every chapter. This emphasis on the identity of certain aspects of his book to emphasize their uniqueness while keeping other aspects of his book open to interpretation signify the role of identity and interchangeability in his story. 

Sarah 

Unavoidable Mirrors

     After readings several works of Murakami, I can't help but think that he is obsessed with mirrors and the search of true identity. In his short stories, The Mirror and Where I'm Likely to Find It, as well as his novel, A Wild Sheep Chase, he will dedicate a whole scene to the narrator and his experience with a mirror. In these three works of Murakami's, the narrator doesn't have a name and the story is told in the first-person narrative always. Without too much special personality, these narrators are on some sort of mission, but bump into a mirror.

    In The Mirror, the narrator is just an ordinary night watchman at a school who encounters a mirror that never actually existed. The narrator acknowledged he saw himself, yet he thinks it isn't him. It bothered him and he couldn't explain it. The narrator concluded: "The one thing I did understand was that this other figure loaded me. Inside it was a hatred like an iceberg floating in a dark sea. The kind of hatred that no one could ever diminish" (p. 59). It's as almost that he saw the person with his true identity, but that person doesn't like who he is right now. And that truly haunts him till this day.

    In Where I'm Likely to Find It, the narrator is trying to find his client's husband who went missing, but finds a mirror during his search. A little girl he bumps into on the staircase tells him that the mirror between the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth floor makes you look the best. Looking into the mirror, the narrator thinks: "And, sure enough, the image of me reflected in the mirror was a few degrees removed from what I was used to seeing. The me in the mirror looked plumper and happier. As if I'd just polished off a stack of hot pancakes" (p. 287). Once again, the narrator in this story believed the "man" he sees in the mirror is happier than him. After all, the narrator is a detective without extreme motive for money and does these investigations for free. He sees this happy man in the mirror, but doesn't seem to want to be him.

    In A Wild Sheep Chase, the narrator finds a dirty mirror in the Rat's house and decides to clean it. After it was cleaned, he looked into the mirror and just thought that it was a normal reflection of him. But he thought to himself: "My image was unnecessarily sharp, however. I wasn't seeing my mirror-flat mirror-image. It wasn't myself I was seeing; on the contrary, it was as if I were the reflection of the mirror and this flat-me-of-an-image were seeing the real me" (p. 319). Again, here we see the narrator not thinking that the reflection in the mirror is truly him. They did the same movements and look exactly the same, yet he still believes it is not himself that he is seeing.

    The names of these three pieces all connect to the fact that he is chasing something down or finding someone that is not himself. Murakami obsesses over looking and looking for something, therefore having written works in detective style. But I think what he is looking for in all these works is his true self. His own identity. Without mentioning his name once in these stories, the narrator is plain and usually doesn't have very unique or appealing characteristics that people want to remember. And while the narrators are searching and searching for their identity, they end up seeing someone else in the mirror that they don't believe is them. And they will just leave the mirror without much thought. But what I think is that they see this other version of themselves in the mirror which gets them a step closer to finding their identity. They see themselves in another light with their own eyes, but they all walk away from the mirror without too much thought. This makes me think that they either don't like their true identity and just want to continue the simple life they are already living or that what they saw is not their true identity and that they have to continue on with their search to find the true identity they want to find.

Sonia

The Third Ear

     As I was finishing A Wild Sheep Chase, I was struck by the theme of dissociation within one’s own body/self that seems to appear multiple times throughout the book. To me, Murakami seems to be exploring concepts of consciousness versus subconsciousness, and the whole story feels like a metaphor for different paths through mental illness. My exploration starts with Boku’s girlfriend’s ears. 

When Boku first meets his girlfriend for dinner, she states “blocked ears are dead ears. I killed my own ears” (p. 40). Boku goes on to summarize what she has just told him, saying “. . . at such times that you must show your ears, you block off the passageway between your ears and your consciousness“ (p. 40), a statement which she affirms. However, Boku’s girlfriend never describes why it is necessary to create separation between her ears and her consciousness. This separation does lead one to consider that if her ears are separate from her consciousness, perhaps by default they are part of her subconscious. In their first conversation, she also tells Boku about her interest in psychology, stating she is taking a correspondence course in psychology. Based on this, she (and Murakami) would be familiar with basic concepts of psychoanalysis. One such concept is the idea of the third ear. Philip Bromberg describes the third ear as such: 

“One of the peculiarities of this third ear1 is that it works in two ways. It can catch what other people do not say, but only feel and think; and it can also be turned inward. It can hear voices from within the self that are otherwise not audible because they are drowned out by the noise of our conscious thought processes” (Bromberg, 29).
This concept lends itself to the multiple instances throughout the book in which Boku’s girlfriend seems to have clairvoyant ability, such as when she predicts the emergence of the sheep in Boku’s future or senses that they need to stay at the Dolphin Hotel. While Boku is often caught up in his thoughts and anxieties, his girlfriend seems to be capable of channeling a quiet calm that allows here to ‘listen’ per se. Thus, her ears serve as a connection not only to her subconscious but what seems to be a collective subconscious. 

The collective subconscious is a space which can have positive impacts, such as finding the Dolphin Hotel, but can also be negative, leaving one’s subconscious open to inhibition by another, potentially parasitic, being. The primary example of this is the sheep. The sheep enters via the subconscious -- people’s masked desires and weaknesses, a slice of pie in the Rat’s case (an allusion to his nickname?), through their dreams as with the Sheep Professor (p. 221), or via hallucinations as with the Boss (p. 142). Once the individual is dominated by their subconscious rather than their conscious, their free will is lost.

Boku experiences a moment where his grasp of himself starts to slip after he cleans the mirror. He describes looking at himself in the mirror, saying, “it wasn’t myself I was seeing; on the contrary, it was as if I were the reflection of the mirror and this flat-me-of-an-image were seeing the real me” (p. 319). He goes on to discuss whether he or the figure in the mirror really have any free will. He moves his hand, and so it moves its hand. Or is it vice versa? Similarly, we can wonder whether we have any control over ourselves, or if our subconscious has the ability to override any logical decision making. 

After this reflection, it feels more clear why Boku’s girlfriend is hesitant to show her ears and effectively “kills them”. By cutting the link between her subconscious and conscious, she retains her free will. She recognizes the power of her ears and occasionally taps into that power, but she also sees how the subconscious can be a dangerous place. Boku symbolically escapes this by eventually blowing up the mirror, untethering himself from this other self that may or may not control him. Finally, the rat escapes this control by waiting for the right moment. “‘I died with the sheep inside me. I waited until the sheep was fast asleep, then I tied a rope over the beam in the kitchen and hanged myself. There wasn’t enough time for the sucker to escape’” (p. 332). 

In reflection, this fear of the subconscious and its control over us seems most akin to a person’s struggle with mental illness. We often feel that we would choose a different life for ourselves, but a force within us makes this seem impossible. Murakami explores a dissociation between the self that is autonomous and the self that is compulsory by giving the compulsory self a character, whether it be the sheep, the mirror self, or the ears. His narrative explores how we might sever this connection, providing a commentary on coping mechanisms such as compartmentalization, withdrawal, and suicide. 

 

Natalia 

B    Bromberg P.M. (1984) The Third Ear. In: Caligor L., Bromberg P.M., Meltzer J.D. (eds) Clinical Perspectives 

 

on the Supervision of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Critical Issues in Psychiatry (A Series for Clinicians). Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-3653-0_2

 

N

The Beatles According to Murakami

 

Intertextuality Discussion Questions from Tim

Semiotics and Intertextuality

What has led to the prominence of authorship? Is it societal? Is it inevitable? What is next?

Are all literary works rewritten? Is it impossible to write an original piece? Is ‘originality’ a goal that authors should strive for?

In 1968, Barthes announced 'the death of the author' and 'the birth of the reader', declaring that 'a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination' How does this frame the act of reading? Does this give the reader a responsibility? 

What role does parody play in educating the reader on the conventions of a literary genre? 

When discussing the horizontal and vertical axes, connecting the reader to the author and the text to other texts, what role do “frames”/containers/genres play in those connections? How does the fluidity of genre impact those connections? (e.g. 'advertorials', 'infomercials', 'edutainment', 'docudrama’)

Is ‘transtextuality’ (+ hypertextuality) comprehensive? Is it satisfactory? Can it be?

Semiotic Techniques/Intertextuality in Action

Are The Long Goodbye and A Wild Sheep Chase connected along the vertical axis? How and why?

How does the treatment of the two investigations and hardboiled detective themes differ in these works? What does that mean for the reader? For the works?

The treatment of names/signs in these two books is very different. In The Long Goodbye, hardboiled slang is used in place of universally understood signs. Why? What effect does this create in the text? What experience does this give the reader? In A Wild Sheep Chase, many things, notably people, are not given traditional signs, forcing the reader to refer to them as “Boku” or “I” How does this treatment of signs impact your reading of the work and consideration of those characters?

What anchoring features in these two works? What constraints do they enforce?

How do non-textual elements change the experience of reading/rewriting these works? (Reading as a class)

How conscious is the use of intertextuality in these two works? (How reflexive is it?)

How critical is recognition of intertextuality to comprehending these texts?

Star Shaped Birthmarks

    Hey everyone! Something that's been on my mind while reading A Wild Sheep Chase is the sheep's appearance. More specifically, I've been interested in the sheep's star-shaped birthmark. While the animal is clearly magic, and the mark might just be an indicator of its magic, I was curious to see if there was any deeper symbolic meaning in the symbol. In class, the professor mentioned that architecture in Hokkaido often featured the star, and that locals said it represented the North Star. This makes a great deal of thematic sense to have on the sheep, since the North Star is often used for navigation. Given that the North Star is always located to the north, many look for it when lost as a means to reorient themselves. In a similar way, Boku is functionally lost when he sets out looking for the sheep. He has no job to come back to, few families ties (if any), and only a couple friends in his immediate vicinity. In a societal sense, he is lost. By looking for the sheep, he's gained him funds, a chance to get closer with his girlfriend, and the excuse to meet numerous new people.

    While doing a little research on the North Star's significance in Japan, I came across an article on Myōken, a deification of the North Star in Japanese Buddhism. Myōken is an agricultural deity, often depicted as a young man with a sword. He is also a Bodhisattva, meaning that he is capable of reaching nirvana but continues to reincarnate out of compassion for helping others. Ordinarily Bodhisattvas try to help others approach nirvana, but this compassion may be reflected in the story as the sheep's decision to keep the Boss alive for so many years. To what degree the sheep cares for the rest of humanity, however, remains to be seen, as the Sheep Professor was left in a much worse state after the two came into contact.

    While I was searching for information on star-shaped birthmarks, the overwhelming majority of results had to do with a series called Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. From what I've read, it began in 1987, two years before the publication of A Wild Sheep Chase, and is still ongoing. The series is split into eight parts so far, each following a different descendant of the Joestar family. Each of the protagonists have a star shaped birthmark on their shoulder, apparently as a genetic marker of being a member of the family. Whether Murakami read and took inspiration from this is unclear. Considering it's been running for more than thirty years, I can't exactly skim the plot for similarities. I haven't found anything about sheep, though apparently one of the family members heads the Italian mafia, somewhat akin to the Boss' position. From what I've read, I think the star-shaped birthmark is a purely cosmetic similarity between the two, but if anyone knows more about the series I'd love to hear about it!

Bruce