Who Is The Narrator In A Wild Sheep Chase

Murakami never commits his novel A Wild Sheep Chase to any one interpretation, and he is content with ambiguity. This story contains a combination of themes including coming-of-age, boy meets girl, isolation, obsession, vision quests and even traits of old style hard boiled detective stories. Murakami’s narrator is a heavy smoker and a deep thinker, often using dark dialogue to paint a picture of gloom. We are introduced to the narrator at a point in his life where he is isolated, between divorce and a new girlfriend, and this isolation continues to be a major theme throughout the book. The sheep professor lives in his room above the Dolphin hotel because he is “sheepless”, and feeds his obsession of the sheep behind closed doors. “The Boss”
rules from the shadows, and the Rat’s letters are mailed without a return address because “[he’s] sure things’ll be better that way” (Murakami, 88). Murakami’s use of language, and blurring fantasy with reality is an attempt to convey the message that we are isolated beings, naturally resistant to authority, and because of this we are lonely creatures with an undying drive to find happiness in a demanding and unforgiving world. Murakami’s narrator is the epitome of isolation and monotonous routine. “Eyes close, exactly sixteen steps. No more, no less. My head blank from the whiskey, my mouth reeking from cigarettes” (Murakami, 15). The narrator has been confined to his post-divorce routine, living a life of monotony with no one but the cat to keep him company. He has little to eat in the refrigerator, none of which is traditional Japanese food. There can be much said about the contents of a person’s refrigerator, and in this case Murakami’s narrator’s unhappiness is reflected by the bareness of his fridge, and the lack of flavor that his food possesses. “The tomatoes and string beans were but chilled shadows. Tasteless shadows. Nor was there any taste to the coffee or crackers” (Murakami, 19). It is not until he is in transit from Sapporo to Asahikawa that Murakami’s narrator eats traditional Japanese food, a box lunch containing salmon roe, while reading Authorative History of Junitaki Township. Prior to this, Murakami’s narrator rarely eats, and possesses a neutral opinion towards everything in his life. He makes little effort to know anything about the people in his life. In reference to the girl who would sleep with anyone, the narrator states that “I forgot her name. I could pull out the obituary, but what difference would it make now…About her background I know almost nothing. What I do know, someone may have told me; maybe it was she herself when we were in bed together” (Murakami, 6). Murakami’s narrator’s lack of interest in the other characters in the novel suggests that he is distant and without emotion or concern for others. This is the reader’s first look into the mind of the narrator. Murakami uses these examples to foreshadow struggles the narrator must face with isolation and the changes he must go through in order to obtain happiness.
Some of these themes found in A Wild Sheep Chase can be seen in the short story To Build a Fire by Jack London. Foreshadowing in To Build a Fire sets a gloomy mood as he describes the day as “exceedingly cold and grey…It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark…” (jacklondons.net). Murakami begins A Wild Sheep Chase in a similar way, using to-the-point language and a dark tone when describing of the funeral of “the girl who’d sleep with anyone” (Murakami, 5) to foreshadow death later in the novel, and create an eerie feel that is present throughout the book.
London’s narrator is without a name, and as Murakami also symbolizes in A Wild Sheep Chase, the narrators’ namelessness is connected to their inability to make emotional connections with other characters.
Murakami’s narrator is static and unemotional in his relationships with his ex-wife, his girlfriend with magical ears and his cat, who is eventually the only character in the novel that is given a name. Towards the end of A Wild Sheep Chase, Murakami’s narrator begins to display emotion by crying for a brief moment and then instantly returning to his static emotionless demeanor, but not until after the weight of the sheep chase has been lifted, and he had lost his girlfriend forever. London’s nameless narrator’s lack of emotional bonding is displayed by his treatment of the dog. Like Murakami’s narrator, London’s narrator does not give the dog a name, “it’s just there” (Murakami, 178). He does not possess a bond with the dog, and risks its life by pushing it on to a frozen creek to test its stability, showing no sympathy for the dog when its fur is instantly frozen. London’s narrator finally displays feelings of envy towards the dog as he “regarded the creature that was warm and secure in its natural covering” (jacklondons.net), but not until he is facing death
himself. The same hard-boiled detective writing style is also found in the novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S.
Thompson. Although Thompson’s novel is based on the idea of finding the American dream, it is also open to many other interpretations such as resistance to authority, blurring reality with fantasy, and journey. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is written in a similar way as A Wild Sheep Chase, using language, setting and cigarettes to create a detective-like atmosphere. Thompson, the narrator of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and his attorney give themselves fake names that they use to check-in to various hotels on the Las Vegas strip. They run up large room-service bills, impersonate cops to attend drug conferences and conduct a report on a dune buggy race under their fake names, while continuously purchasing and ingesting a large array of
narcotics.

“The room was full of used towels; they were hanging everywhere. The bathroom floor was about six inches deep with soap bars, vomit, and grapefruit rinds, mixed with broken glass. I had to put my boots on every time I went in there to piss. The nap of the mottle grey rug was so thick with marijuana seeds that it appeared to be turning green… But what kind of addict would need all these coconut rinds? Would the presence of junkies account for all these uneaten French fries? These puddles of glazed catsup on the bureau?” (Thompson, 187).
The journey that Thompson’s narrator and his attorney have set out on has a purpose at first, but as the story progresses and the two fall deeper in to anarchy, their mission becomes less understandable, and eventually becomes a blur of random events leading up to the narrator’s slip in to insanity. Likewise, Murakami’s narrator seems to lose more and more of himself to isolation, and as he sinks farther in to solitude his mission becomes more confusing. “Most of the afternoons I would pass looking out at the pasture. I soon began seeing things. A figure emerging from the birch woods and running straight in my direction. Usually it was the sheep man, but sometimes it was the Rat, sometimes it was my girlfriend. Other times it was the sheep with the star on its back” (Murakami, 305).
Like the narrators in To Build a Fire and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Murakami’s narrator’s loneliness and inability to connect to other characters in the story leads up to the narrator’s demise, or in Murakami’s case, the loss of his girlfriend. Despite all three narrator’s decline in mental health — London’s progression towards death, Murakami’s hallucinations of the Rat and Thompson’s casual slip into insanity— they still hold on to their dreams of home, happiness and the American dream. As London’s narrator nears death, he envisions finding his own body and thinking “It certainly was cold…when he got back to the states he could tell the folks what real cold was”. Murakami’s narrator returns home with a check from “the man in the black suit” (Murakami, 345) and gives it to his former business partner J to pay off loans. “What say you take on the Rat and me as co-partners? No worry about dividends or interest. A partnership in name is fine” (Murakami, 352). Eventually, Murakami’s narrator decides that he will find happiness in passing on the Rat’s good will, and his own fortune. Thompson concludes Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with his narrator on a crazed drug binge. He boards a plane and flies to Denver, only to awake in confusion. He decides that since he is already here, we will pick up a vicious dog and walk to a pharmacy to pick up some Amyls. After convincing the cashier that he is a doctor and that he does not need a prescription, he cracks a capsule of Amyl under his nose and snorts it in front of the clerk. Laughing hysterically, he leaves the pharmacy under the impression that he has successfully found the American dream. “I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger… a Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident” (Thompson, 204). All three of these pieces reflect an idea that a human’s natural instinct in a time of isolation is to defy all that stands against us and strive for happiness even during times of death and loss.