A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami - Review and Interpretation

A Wild Sheep Chase, (probably) a thriller blended in mythology or history? Don’t know for sure. Same question after reading Murakami again. What is it about..?? Struggle to understand LIFE better or helplessness with the ambitiously interwoven WORLD where you have got no control on your own life or the need for every individual to chase his own mysterious SHEEP or a metaphor and an allegory of human race extremely busy with its wild chase, leaving everything behind without any fruitful result or as I had pointed our earlier; is it merely the musings of an author who doesn't seem to belong to this world anymore? I couldn't make out what it really is.
 

This is my third Murakami novel, the first being Norwegian Wood and the second being After Dark (also read some of his short stories). Reading Murakami was pretty easy in these 2 novels; at least the flow was smooth and there was always a connection with the reader. However, A Wild Sheep Case seemed a bit different. It was difficult to read, you tend to lose the connection and you feel like giving up on it many times. Or maybe it’s just too deep for me. I am being pretty frank should I say I haven’t understood a thing about the work. Let me reveal what got in to me.

It begins simply enough: A twenty plus advertising executive receives a mysterious (Normal in Murakami’s works) postcard from a friend(named rat) and inadvertently uses it as an image for an insurance company’s advertisement. What he doesn’t realize is that included in the pastoral scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man in black (associate of a right wing pawn broker) who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences. Thus begins a surreal and elaborate quest that takes our protagonist from the urban haunts of Tokyo to the remote and snowy mountains of northern Japan, where he confronts not only the mythological sheep, but the confines of tradition and the demons deep within himself.

What does the sheep with a star shaped mark on its back, a girl with supernaturally dazzling ears and an unnatural sixth sense, right wing pawn broker and his associate, a dwarf in a sheep outfit (the sheep man), the sheep professor and the wild sheep chase signify?   

The novel according to me is a modern story told in the form of a fairy tale thereby creating the opportunities to question the working of the modern world methods. Like in a fairy tale, where mermaids or supernatural beings guide the human hero in achieving the final task, the girl with the mysterious ears and an unnatural sixth sense accompanies the hero to achieve his task and disappears abruptly.

What hero witnesses is the modern ‘questy’ adventure and the intended theme of the novel. The sheep enters people’s bodies and brings about a drastic change in them. What are the changes as we understand them?

The BOSS was a mediocre right wing youth until he was “possessed” by the sheep whilst in prison (so already a bad guy).  As a result of this possession, he emerges a new charismatic man who builds a “powerful underground kingdom” that controls practically all sorts of things you could never dream of (Probably a metaphor for the “Dollar” obsession of many people) 

The second one, a Sheep Professor with an unusual passion for agricultural administration who is possessed by the sheep.  The sheep then abandons him, leaving him “sheepless”, thereby making him  a filthy, embittered, old man ; in a word practically useless (Probably a metaphor for the research obsession of a section of people).

Then there’s an unnamed Ainu youth, who helps (sacrificing his blood and sweat) a band of Japanese settlers survive the harsh conditions in Hokkaido, and establish Junitaki-cho, a town central to the plot.  He takes a Japanese wife and name, and becomes a shepherd after he is gifted sheep by the government.  Unknown to him, the sheep are intended to produce thermal wool for soldiers in the Russo-Japanese war.  Irony being, his eldest son is killed in that same war (Probably a metaphor for the way Govt is capable of treating its subjects in the disguised form..Yeah Murakami must he hitting at the Public servants).

The novel thus mainly concentrated on various types of people who had possessed (symbolic representation of the transition or mutation in the individual thru inspiration or ambition) the sheep they had aspired to become which essentially generalized the main categories in to which people fall.

And finally there is our confused hero (probably one like Murakami) who is in search of his own sheep. He witnesses the various sheep tales but unfortunately hadn’t found his own sheep (or probably found). Most important thing to be noted is, after the sheep is gone, the un-possessed soul is frustrated, tortured and is almost dead for any practical purpose. So, be it any category you belong to, frustration is all you would be left with. This is what I could make out from the work. I don’t know whether my analysis is right or wrong. Even if it’s right, I won’t feel proud for that.  Want to add my own philosophy here (sorry critics who loved the work. Frankly I hadn’t found anything else other than the BIG name.).

Why am I analyzing this..? Is it worthy? What am I doing? Do I really need to do this? Whatever it may be. I didnot like the way the story was narrated or the point was intended to tell. Allegory, metaphor, magical realism (or whatever that is not pretty straight forward) employed in its truest spirit can fetch wonderful effects and results. But this one I don’t think it does. There are some comparisons of this work with Kafka’s. But I feel Kafka is pretty straight forward. Intended point is pretty clear and he employs his tools in the most efficient manner to bring the right effect. Length being small, spending greater amount of time on each word is possible and the rewards for the time spent are huge. You end up learning something pretty useful. But this one doesn’t. The length of the novel doesn’t cooperate. Researching each and every page is also not possible. Or May be my literary vocab is very limited. I don’t know. Mukrakami is not a small name and I am yet to read many of his other masterpieces to know him more. Probably there is more buried in A Wild Sheep Chase which Iam not yet sure of. May be, I will have to reread it again and see whether what I wrote in this review matters then or not.