Your Name, Please?

    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 arguably closest to him in his life. In fact, just about every character in the book is predisposed without 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 stand out to him?
 

    Is his partner just a fellow being to share his labor with? Is his girlfriend nothing but an outlet of sexual impulse and desire? Furthermore, why does Boku never tell us his own name? Can this be due to a nihilistic perspective on Boku's end? Does Boku "want" to further his own disillusion and alienation from life? It's hard to say.
 

    What makes this all stranger is the fact that only one man is referred to by a "name" in the novel, J, the bar owner. Of course, it's not confirmed if J is the actual name of the bar owner or a nickname, but that's irrelevant.  A familiar use of the name "J" makes him stand out far amongst the other characters due to his distinct personalization attributed by the use of "J". Perhaps to Boku, J is a man that sees him for who he is; liberated by the freedoms alcoholism provides,  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 as a function to arise within the boundaries of the real, a lack of one allows the surreal to absolve oneself of all worldly consequences.      

I would like to end by quoting Albert Camus's The Rebel, "If one believes in nothing, if
nothing makes sense, if we can assert no value whatsoever, everything is permissible and nothing is important." (The Rebel, 13).

- DK