Week 3: A Wild Sheep Chase

I do find A Wild Sheep Chase a little bit obscure. I remember it was at junior high school that I read this book for the first time. I couldn’t progress any more in understanding the plot of the book until I read through it during my second try recently.

 

In my view, the sheep in the story symbolizes the modernization unscrupulously driven by the then Japanese government. With its enormously relentless aggression and expansion, the sheep has become an evil and dark incarnate of the Japanese militarism.

 

However, one point worth a special mention is that I really appreciate the author’s way of expressing loneliness, which keeps me aware of how great it is to be “mediocre” and how glorious the loneliness coming in the wake of this kind of “mediocrity” is. The first-person protagonist in the book is just like an onlooker watching with equanimity the rollout of the whole story.

 

The sheep seems to be endowed with some certain psychically immortal divinity throughout the storyline which empowers each of the parasitized with supernatural capabilities or energy. Just take the two pieces of sheepskin in the story for example, when parasitized by the sheep, the undying dignity, the wondrous mindset, as well as the power of possibly incarnating the dignity and mindset are bestowed on the sheepskin, whereas when disassociated from the sheep, the sheepskin-formed people are visibly like junkies who are being plagued by their drug addiction, instantly not as glorious as before. I’m rather fond of what the sheep is depicted and find it very interesting. I believe the sheep described in the book is a metaphorical evil embodiment.

 

The book gives me a sense of tranquility across the board with a kind of ineluctably doomed sense of helplessness. I should have appreciated it more if I could understand more of the book.

By the way, I‘m very impressed with the little girl’s words “live on until 26 and then die” in the book, which as far as I’m concerned, is written to give expression to the protagonist’s attitude towards life and his melancholic value.

 

Though classified as a horror and suspense novelist, Haruki Murakami gives me an insight into his detached mindset through his words. Immersed in the world exclusively in his possession, I can feel a unique sense of horror. His novels don‘t terrify us the same as the Japanese contemporary horror movies do with various elements. Instead, the sense of horror of his novels comes pervasively and involuntarily from psychological grief and sorrow, which leaves a more in-depth imprint on us than the usual way adopted in the horror movies.

 

There are lots of implications in the book. For instance, I remember a scene in which the protagonist doesn’t think the mirror stained until he finds the water in the bucket is obnoxiously dirty after wiping the mirror. Everything in the mouse’s villa is squeaky clean except this mirror, blemished with oil. Moreover, the sheep man is invisible in the mirror. I do think these implications tug at my heartstrings, which I regard as a more intangible and profound horror.

 

In a nutshell, I like the book quite a lot. I always think the end of the story means a literal beginning of the protagonist‘s life. He begins to seek the meaning of his existence. The search of the sheep is, in fact, a process to devastate who he is at present. Only by devastating the mediocre and tedious present form of him can his life turns over a new leaf.