Sloane -- The Sheep Man Beyond Wild Sheep Chase

 Hi everyone,

I really liked Murakami's short story "Green Street in Sydney," not just because it was entertaining and ridiculous but because it also brought the Sheep Man back into play. I think it's interesting that Murakami chose to infuse this story with an intertextual reference to A Wild Sheep Chase, and yet did so without using the Sheep Man in the same way at all. I don't think it's the same Sheep Man that Boku encounters in Hokkaido, although this one also wears a sheep costume. For one thing, he's (likely) not the Rat's spirit taking on a physical form, and for another he is visible to all other characters in the story so there's nothing to indicate he doesn't exist. 

Then there's the matter of the Sheep Professor, who possesses the same title as the father of the hotel owner in A Wild Sheep Chase but also seems to be someone else altogether. This professor hates the sheep men because they annoy him running around so freely in their costumes, which leads him to project his jealousy that they can do so onto them. But in the end he becomes a Sheep Man himself when he puts his fear of living how he really wants to aside and dons the sheep costume. It's a completely different existence than how the Sheep Professor wound up in the end of A Wild Sheep Chase,  weeping that his search for the sheep was over and his year-long obsession was over -- but then what? 

I know I just said that I feel the Sheep Professor is someone else in this story, but at the same time I do feel that he holds the essence of the other Sheep Professor. For me, it reads like the Green Street that the story takes place on is an alternate reality this character has passed into. Instead of shutting himself away from the rest of the world and dedicating his life to searching for something which has already passed him by, he takes the reins of his own life and finds freedom in a new identity. In this way, I think "Green Street in Sydney" could be seen as a semi-epilogue of A Wild Sheep Chase, at least for the professor. 

Maybe the narrator of the story is a different version of A Wild Sheep Chase's Boku as well! With a real girlfriend this time (notably with a name, too). It's like he got a taste for detective-work in A Wild Sheep Chase and then actually became one in a different reality. I don't really know what to make of the Sheep Man, though (especially the fact that there are multiple of them running around).

- Sloane