A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami was, to be honest, a little bit creepy. In fact Murakami's creates a setting within the novel similar to the mood and tone of Housekeeping - one that was a bit haunting, mysterious, and eerie. The book is basically about a man who gets singled out to find a mysterious sheep with a star on its back, or face "dire consequences". Thus, his journey begins as he sets out to find this sheep, who holds a mysterious connection to his friend Rat.

The literary merit of this book is definitely in Murakami's skill in the manipulation of the tone, plot, and characters. This novel actually fit really well with the "myth" unit we are currently studying and I actually saw a lot of similarities between this novel and The Road as well as parts of The Power of Myth. Like McCarthy, Murakami also choses to not reveal the names of any of his characters (the Rat is just a nickname for his friend). Additionally, he draws on elements of mythology, weaving it in effortlessly with real life. The protagonist meets a girlfriend with magical ears, a sheep man, and eventually (what seems to be) the ghost of the rat. By the end of the novel, my mind was spinning and it was hard to distinguish what was real and what was surreal. Murakami utilizes language in a way that blends reality and fiction to create a almost dream-like setting in which the protagonist appears to be struggling, but is conveniently helped along his journey by guides at just the right moments. What was really appealing was the way that the plot gradually grew darker as the novel progressed. It starts off with the protagonist living an everyday mediocre societal life with a wife, a business partner, a successful business etc. But by the end of the novel (and his journey to find the mythological sheep), the protagonist becomes completely isolated without friends or family snowed in an mansion in the rural mountainsides. When I got to part of his isolation, it actually gave me goosebumps (for other reasons that would give away the book).
 Additionally, Murakami creates this huge buildup of desperation, anxiety, mediocrity, darkness surrounding the protagonist that is never directly addressed, or resolved. Murakami begins the build up when the protagonist realizes that was simply a pawn in the man in the black suit's plan. He narrates:
        
          I was ready to get the hell off the mountain, but somehow that offered no satisfaction
          I had gotten in too deep. I would have been so easy if only I could have cried. But
          crying wasn't an option, because I felt that far ahead of me there was something really
          worth crying about.
                                                                                                      (Murakami 315)

The protagonist, as he is waiting for the Rat, also experiences "a terrifying dream. A dream too terrifying to recall" (323) during the middle of the night. In addition to this dream, the protagonist's feeling that something "far ahead of me...was something really worth crying about" served to intensify the premonition that something momentous will happen in the next few chapters. One would think that it is upon the arrival, and exit, of the Rat , but the protagonist does not "cry" until after his journey ends. Furthermore, the protagonist continues to exists in a dream-like state even after the Rat leaves when he becomes "unbearably cold", hears "someone whisper in [his] ear" and sees random people like the chauffeur, the Sheep Man and Charlie Christian (340). His fevered state accompanied by his frenzied actions and disjointed thoughts all help build up the expectations of a moment of catharsis for the reader. However, (for me at least) this moment never came.
In the end, the protagonist returns to "the land of the living"that he accepts as "[his] world...no matter how boring or mediocre it might be" (348) while distancing himself from 'memory'. The the ending occurs just as the novel began; the protagonist simply resumes his life of mediocrity by starting a new business with a new partner, without addressing his 'memories' of his sheep chase. Even when he eventually "cries", the protagonist does not address his reasons at all. He just cried, wiped his tears, and continued his walk, leaving the reader to wonder for what (or who) was he crying for? Why was he crying? What was "worth crying about"? The reader is left with a million more questions in addition to emotional build up that Murakami had created, successfully making the reader think harder and deeper about the meaning behind the novel.

However, I liked that Murakami intentionally leaves an open and seemingly insignificant ending because the book itself was so disjointed and symbolic. The plot is seemingly juvenile (with a Sheep Man and a girlfriend with magical ears to name a few characters) but the novel itself is anything but.

Although this book was a little eerie, I would definitely recommend it.

Link:
http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Sheep-Chase-Novel/dp/037571894X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1298786826&sr=1-1