Repost of Thoughts on HM and Connection to Dostoevsky - ALLEN

 Hello Class,

I find Murakami's writing to be particularly interesting because of the characteristics of his characters. Having read The Brothers Karamazov, there are a few parallels between Dostoevsky and Murakami I want to talk about. Dostoevsky is known for his existential view. In The Brothers Karamazov, there was a discussion on the cruelty and flaw of God, because otherwise this world would not have any suffering. Thus, the argument was that there is no God, and if there is, it is an evil one. This rejection of a divine being and meaning in life reflects Dostoevsky's nihilistic perspective.  

The characteristic of Boku shows a nihilistic view from a different angle. He finds the world almost meaningless through an objective view and lives a mundane life. It is almost as if Boku is a student of nihilism! However, there is a key difference to distinguish between Dostoevsky's and Murakami's views. Dostoevsky promotes active nihilism, where one is tormented by the lack of meaning and rebels. On the other hand, Murakami's characters portray passive nihilism, where they kind of just coexist and accept the meaningless world (almost as if they don't care). It could also be argued that Murakami's characters are existentialists, where they try to find meaning through a quest like in A Wild Sheep Chase. In the last chapter, Boku breaks down and finally feels emotion, which could symbolize his growth out of a detached life, thus actually challenging Dostoevsky's view.

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

The Sheep Man- Carly

Hello class,

I wanted to talk about my thoughts on whether the Sheep Man exists, as my thoughts have changed since I first finished A Wild Sheep Chase last week. When I first read the end of the story, I felt sure that the Sheep Man did not exist at all in any form. The Sheep Man’s reflection not showing up in the mirror made me think this. I now think that the Sheep Man physically exists sometimes, but “Boku” also has a habit of creating people in his head as a coping mechanism, and the Sheep Man has become one of those people in his head. Throughout the story, I thought of Boku as a very lonely person. I also think Boku’s loneliness is self-induced and a result of his apathetic approach to life. The story started with him talking about his ex-situationship from college and how she passed away in an accident. As he talked about their time together, although he could recount their encounters in detail, I did not feel like he was particularly moved by her passing or felt any regret or sadness about losing someone he had memories with. Later on in the story, when Boku is in the limo with the chauffeur, and he says he almost forgot he had a name, this shows how he barely cared about even his own existence. He had many more moments like this when he seemed like he just didn’t care enough, or seemed disconnected from life. 

It is also relevant to mention that I am suspicious of the girlfriend’s existence as well. The Sheep Man told Boku that his girlfriend left, and that Boku was “confusing,” her, and he “only thinks about himself” (Chapter 35). Instances like this in the story made me think that Boku created the Sheep Man to force him confront his insecurities about himself. In the same way, the girlfriends’ existence is also showing Boku how his lack of care for others will lead to him being alone. To prevent myself from becoming too long-winded, basically, I think Boku is emotionally stunted, and the people/characters he creates in his head are helping him to change his inability to feel. 

-Carly

Murakami Reshaping Japanese Identity -Alexia Koulikourdis

What struck me most in the interview between Mr. McInerney and Murakami was how Murakami describes the way he became an author. He reflects upon it as a break from tradition without fully abandoning it. His parents were both teachers of Japanese literature and his initial rejection of it appears to be a personal rebellion. Instead of following the traditional literary path, Murakami immersed himself in American culture, reading writers like Raymond Chandler, listening to jazz, and absorbing Western popular media. What’s interesting, though, is that this rebellion doesn’t result in Murakami abandoning his Japanese identity. Rather than setting his novels in America, he uses Western cultural references as a lens to portray Japan from an indirect angle. He describes wanting to depict what remains “Japanese” after stripping away elements that feel overly traditional. In this way, his work resists both literary nationalism and cultural imitation. 

This helps explain why A Wild Sheep Chase feels simultaneously global and deeply rooted in Japan. Even the surreal elements of the sheep hunt are treated as oddly ordinary, which mirrors Murakami’s goal of showing what remains after tradition has been stripped back. A Wild Sheep Chase fits neatly into this interview because it shows Murakami working through that balance, using distance and restraint not to escape Japanese identity, but to see it more clearly. 

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 

Juliet's post

 

Hello! It’s Juliet.

I am convinced that Cervantes’ Don Quixote substantially influenced both Chandler and Murakami’s fictional works. Firstly, Don Quixote is centered around a protagonist out of step with his social world. His mission is to “do justice” according to a code that is no longer accepted as law. Marlowe and Boku, too, embark on explorations searching for something outside of the law, outside of convention—yet this object is ambiguous and doesn’t surely seem to exist. Interestingly, Don Quixote, Marlowe, and Boku each try to opt out of their respective societies’ money systems. Don Quixote goes from adventure to adventure without money, realizing a lifestyle which transcends the material world—even if this means frequent beatings and imprisonment. Similarly, Marlowe and Boku seem to see themselves as somehow above money—with Marlowe, in the case of rejecting Eileen’s money, and with Boku, the case of giving his money from the Boss’ people to J at the end. Also—Cervantes is known for parodying the literature of his contemporary society, particularly chivalric romances. He employs tropes from these romances and flips them on their head, exposing the absurdity of those stories which always tie up so neatly at the end. As Suter notes, Chandler is parodying rationalist detective stories, while Murakami parodies the Hard Boiled genre. Each of the three authors recombines different components of a conventional genre in a novel and subversive way. The parallels between A Wild Sheep Chase, Don Quixote, and The Long Goodbye are best brought to life by reading their endings. None of them are quite satisfying—or at least, none of them restore their world’s order as happy, fulfilling endings tend to do. We can’t make sense of Don Quixote’s regret at the end of the story, or Marlowe’s dispassionate reunion with Terry, or Boku’s relationship to rat, or what the sheep means in the end of it all. These unsatisfying endings are intentional—they challenge conventional narratives by showing that human journeys are cyclical by nature, never resolved. 

These ideas led me to think more about whether the parallels between Cervantes and Murakami/Chandler are just results of the intertextual nature of literature. After all, Don Quixote being (arguably) the first novel ever, I would be surprised if there were a novel entirely untouched by Cervantes’ influence. So, I sought out more explicit links. In The Long Goodbye, I found a line that I think must be a direct reference. 

Here are two lines, the first from Chandler and the second from Cervantes: 

“A difficult thing, being a cop. You never know whose stomach it’s safe to jump up and down on” (The Long Goodbye, 241).

“He climbed on top of his ribs and started to trop up and down from one end of them to the other” (Don Quixote, XVI). 

The idea of someone jumping up and down another’s stomach is very specific and unusual, which is why I think Chandler’s line must be a reference to the Quixote. In terms of Murakami, I did not find such an explicit link, but aside from the thematic parallels covered, it’s worth noting that Dostoevsky was one of his biggest influences. Dostoevsky writes that the Quixote is “the final and greatest utterance of the human mind.” As such an admirer of Dostoevsky, it would be shocking if he’d never thought to read his favorite book. 

Murakami's Use of Classical Music

Hello everyone!

In this post I would like to discuss the use and implications of classical music within Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase. To many, the choice of music, form, and composer may seem insignificant. However if you dive into a little bit of music theory and backstory of some pieces, you can find a possible connection as to why Murakami chose these specific words in certain parts of the book.

On page 148, Boku is on his way back from the meeting with the Boss and the Chauffer happens to put on a Chopin Ballade. In music, a ballade is a single piece that is meant to tell a narrative story without the use of words. Chopin used them in a dramatic way, invoking a deep sense of yearning for an unobtainable goal often seen within romantic era music. In Chopin's case, these were all written during his time when he was exiled to France while longing to return to his homeland of Poland. If you've ever listened to any of his ballades before, it is easy to see how one can get lost and carried away on the wordless story Chopin takes you on. Having one of these emotional pieces played right before Boku must make a journey of his own foreshadows the highs and lows that he will experience; ie confronting the demons of his past, learning of the Rat's suicide, losing his girlfriend. 

Although he never specifies which of the 4 is played, I personally would like to infer that he hears Ballade No. 4 in F minor. After listening to all 4, I personally think that this one fits the most within the narrative of the story. Upon the piece starting, Boku remarks that, "I got the feeling I was in a dressing room at a wedding reception." Ballade No. 4 is dedicated to one of Chopin's best students and was written the year she was married off. In my opinion, I can also see the coda of this piece being linked to the release of emotions and tension built up over the course of the end of the book. Boku finding out that the Sheep Man is not real, realizing the Rat committed suicide to put an end to the Sheep's plan, and the explosion of the Rat's house, fully erasing anything left behind in their wake. 

Another example is the mention of a Mozart Concerto on page 43. Boku and his girlfriend are out on their first date at a restaurant while this piece starts to play. A concerto consists of a solo instrument that is accompanied by an entire orchestra. In this case, our solo instrument is his girlfriend and her ears, as Boku's entire focus and reason for wanting to see her is only for them. At the end of his journey, he is told by the Rat on page 338 that her ears have lost the special power that he once sought out and no longer have any meaning to him. If we look into Boku's perspective, ie only seeking this woman out for her ears, we can see how this is akin to a concerto piece without the soloist, as while the accompaniment is still nice to listen to, its nowhere near as nice compared to when we have the soloist. 

With all these small details, one can see why Murakami would choose these specific forms and associate them with certain people. However this is all up to personal interpretation as music can be interpreted in different ways, so I'd love to hear if anyone else has thought about these connections. Thank you!

- Angus Black