Dear Students,
Welcome
to our Murakami class blog! I am looking forward to reading your posts.
Please write at least 200 words each time and remember to sign your
name. Feel free to post whenever the mood strikes you, not only on the
days posts are due.
Anna Elliott
Hello, I'm having the same problem as Allen, so I'll just paste my blog comment here:
ReplyDeleteYour Name?
What constitutes a name? This one thought has perplexed me more than any other after reading Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase. Boku, the protagonist of the novel, has a complicated relationship with the idea of a "name". For one, he never names his own girlfriend, wife, or his work partner -- the people most arguably closest to him in his life. In fact, just about no one in the book has a name. The chauffeur is referred to as the "chauffeur", the secretary as "the Boss's secretary, and the Sheep Professor by his earned title; the same even applies to the Rat. Practically no one in the novel appears with a name. According to Boku, naming is primarily used to distinguish between distinct and non-distinct objects, or as Boku himself puts it, "non-interchangeability is to say that they’re not mass-produced” (A Wild Sheep Chase, 181). We name objects, people, and concepts to give distinct identity to them, a way for the perceived "thing" to stand out against every other "thing". So to Boku, why does nobody to stand out to him?
Is his partner just a fellow being to share his labor with? Is his girlfriend nothing that an outlet of sexual impulse and desire? To further this line of thinking, why does Boku never tell us his own name? Can this be due to a perceived nihilistic perspective on Boku's end to further his own disillusion and alienation from life? It's hard to say.
What makes this all stranger is the fact that one man is referred to by a "name" in the novel, J, the bar owner. Of course, it's not confirmed if J is outright the personal of the man, but the name "J" makes him far stand out amongst the other characters due to his distinct personalization through his name. Perhaps to Boku, J is a man that sees him for who he is? Liberated by the freedoms alcoholism provides, perhaps J is the only person in the world to see Boku for the truest individual he is. It's also worth noting that J is the only person to hint at the Rat and Boku being one in the same, implying a further understanding that Boku himself appears in-cognizant of.
"Naming" is the consummate of Boku's fears -- a reminder of the alienation he has perpetually formulated in his personal life. If Boku chooses to leave things as nameless, abstract beings, then he has no reason to deal with the ramification of their actions towards him and vice versa. A "name" serves of a function to to arise within the boundaries of the real, a lack of one allows the surreal to absolve oneself of all worldly consequences.