Michael Madden
Dr. Paul Gleason
Eng 303, Non-Western Lit
3/12/2008
The Multitudes of Man
Text-self
Alfred Hitchcock said, “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” By Hitchcock’s standards, then, Haruki Murakami is the king of suspense. His book, A Wild Sheep Chase, keeps the reader intrigued for 355 pages and leaves him searching for an answer outside the boundaries of the text. Murakami even takes Hitchcock’s analogy one step further, making the reader decipher what exactly that bang is. David Lynch has said how terribly upset he becomes after solving a mystery. I share this sentiment. I’m only able to reread certain books or watch certain movies multiple times if the mystery remains unsolved or solvable in multiple ways. Conversely, pieces of literature that have an abrupt and revealing ending that gives the story closure becomes dead to me, literally turning my mind off with the final page of the text. Murakami’s ability to write in a labyrinthine style strongly appeals to me; however, all of the things he does with language and imagery as well as the heavy content matter within that style impresses just as much, and gives substantial texture to his often surreal world.
One of those talents exhibited is characterization, which he achieves through nuance and giving his characters distinct voices. Murakami never uses physical descriptors in introducing Boku, opting to display language and actions which allows the reader to build a very singular image of Boku. After Boku and his wife discuss their divorce early in the novel, Boku “downed another cola, then took a hot shower and shaved. [He] was down to the bottom on just about everything–soap, shampoo, shaving cream” (Murakami 23). This passage, at first seemingly void, reveals quite a bit about Boku when linked to all his other actions. For one, taken in tandem with his propensity to drink large amounts of alcohol, I gather that he consumes heavily, having just drunk many sodas in minutes. Secondly, I sense that he only does the bare minimum to get through life. Rather than having extra supplies of necessities such as soap, he will only buy them when absolutely necessary. Overall, this nuanced passage alludes to Boku’s bare bones manliness–a lack of interest in his body, numbness to the world, and a sense of apathy that only comes with detachment. This novel is full of intermittent passages just like this one, which work to continually remind us that each character has an identity.
A way that Murakami continues to reinforce Boku’s detachment from others is by continually focusing on synecdoche and fetish in Boku’s observations. On page 30 Boku dwells, “the severed penis exuded a singular, somehow unspeakable aura of sadness” (Murakami). This is the first of many allusions to parts of a whole that Boku makes, seemingly foreshadowing his journey to find out why the severed penis melancholically affects him. Again on page 35, Boku becomes fascinated by another part, this time the ears of a woman who is to become his girlfriend: “What disappointed me was that she hid her ears under a straight fall of hair” (Murakami 35). Later in that same page, he notices the waiter’s shoes which “looked loads more expensive than mine (Murakami 35). In turn, Boku’s attention to segments of rather than to the whole person helped me to understand his plight, which is his ignorance to the body and mind as being one. It is not only the coded way in which Murakami brings Boku to life that is fascinating, the subject matter of a man stuck in a rut attempting to forge a singular identity in a highly homogenized culture hits close to home as well.
In a 2001 interview, Murakami posits, “What is Japanese? ... This question intrigues me because I’ve found that in this gigantic capitalist society, it is difficult to be an individual.” Clearly, then, Murakami’s question can be applied to the more broad global capital market, lending accessibility to any person struggling with identity. This question is at the heart of his novel, and I believe, that this question lies at the heart of any maturing human. When while alone in the cabin near Hokkaido, Boku contemplates a situation from his childhood that mirrors the state he presently faces:
In this solitary state, the memory of the ocean swim meets I used to participate in when I was a kid came to me. On distant swims between two islands, I would sometimes stop mid-course to look around. To find myself equidistant between two points gave me the funniest feeling... Unsettling, that society could go on perfectly well without me (Murakami 293).
Boku faces a point at which he must decide to face a new reality or to settle with the ineffectual and placid life he has lived up until it. This metaphor sees Boku not only detached from civilization, but also confused that it keeps spinning without him. The melancholy nostalgia exhibited here by Boku reflects a yearning to connect with that humanity, which I think many people need to face before they can truly connect. In other words, we need to experience the without before we know the worth of the with. Murakami, then, asks a fundamental philosophical question about the nature of living. This topic can never get old. I am constantly in flux, always in the middle of that swim between two islands looking every which way, not knowing if I’m getting any closer to any shore. Then when I finally feel myself drifting towards one, a current comes and pulls me to the other.
To conclude, my admiration of A Wild Sheep Chase cannot be expressed in two to three pages. Whitman’s often used quote my sum up Murakami’s novel best: “I am large...I contain multitudes” (96). To pin it down only to the aforementioned qualities would to do Murakami disjustice, much like Boku projecting all of his girlfriend’s good qualities onto her ears. No one part of this novel is better than the other; it is both a complete and fascinating observation of human nature and a work of art.
Text-text: Feminist Criticism
A first person narrative written by a man as a man begs for a feminist criticism. Critic Luce Irigaray argues that “women’s sexual pleasure (jouisance) is more multiple than men’s unitary, phallic pleasure (“woman has sex organs just about everywhere”)… so “feminine” language is more diffusive than its “masculine” counterpart” (Walker 160). Exploring Murakami’s use of synecdoche through Boku will help to support Irigaray’s claim. Essentially, Boku’s struggle is to become more feminine, to see things as wholes rather than mitigating them to their parts. Since Boku does not notice the connection between the mind and the body or the part and its whole, he can only experience pleasure on a corporeal level. So his journey’s end must ultimately be that of feeling something intangible and ineffable, something that diffuses to all ends of his being.
Boku’s fundamental problem is his disconnection of body and mind. When his girlfriend tells him what it’s like to have sex with strange men as a call-girl, she responds with “dry and tasteless” (Murakami 47). Boku assumes that the sex is better for her when her ears are exposed, to which she coalesces, and he suggests, “Then you ought to show them… No need to go out of your way to put up with such dull times” (Murakami 47). She then explains to him, “You don’t understand anything” (Murakami 47). Boku does not realize that her ears represent her vulnerability, with which she can only be comfortable when around those she has a real affection for, Boku being one of them. The fundamental difference between the two, then, is that Boku equates sex with pleasure, while the girlfriend understands that there must be a love connection between partners to experience real pleasure. Because he unconsciously has a fetish for her ears, he projects special powers upon them. The fact remains that he has not the capacity for affection or love, his single phallic purpose being on bodily fulfillment; just like food nourishes the body, so too does sex for Boku.
When his girlfriend does try to explain why she hides her ears, Boku fails to grasp her meaning. As Irigaray puts it, “her language… goes off in all directions and… he is unable to discern the coherence (Walker 160). The girlfriend tells him, “Blocked ears are dead ears. I killed my own ears. That is, consciously cut off the passageway,” in describing what she does to her ears when modeling them; and later, “I am my ears, my ears are me” (Murakami 40, 31). Boku’s response is a dead-brained, pragmatic one: “By killing your ears, do you mean you made yourself deaf?” (Murakami 40). The girlfriend tries to describe how she protects herself from the fact that she is being exploited for her ears by deadening herself to the experience. However, to no avail, as Boku cannot comprehend her figurative explanation of blocking, which he can only understand as something very real. His phallic mindset searches for the cause and effect relationship of her explanation. But it is the why, not the how, the girlfriend tries to convey. He looks at her like a machine, concerned with the function of her parts rather than the purpose of her actions.
It is no surprise, then, the woman must shake the man’s world up and essentially take the first step for him in achieving emotional freedom. Boku says, “Once cause and effect link up, there’ no escape,” which seemingly confirms that he does not believe he can see outside his conditioned sphere of being (Murakami 44). He settles for comfort and familiarity but remains unhappy. The question becomes: How does Boku escape that link? How does he unblock his entire self? After all, as Boku says, “…the flock of sheep could only be taken for a flock of sheep, the birch wood only for a birch wood” (Murakami 74). He has stopped thinking completely, because his one track, phallic mind has already confirmed everything for him. However, this confirmation leaves him longing: “It struck me as wanting that someone should confirm his own existence only by the hands of an electric wall clock” (Murakami 72). So Boku’s Wild Sheep Chase is a search for himself, the sheep with the rebellious star that he longs to be, apart from the pack that has become too comfortable to think for itself. However, not without his girlfriend can Boku be nudged into play. It is she who foresees that a sheep would “be the beginning of a wild adventure” for Boku; rather, that Boku is in need of an emotional awakening (Murakami 49).
Text-text: Lynch’s Lost Highway
Trying to find a counterpart to Murakami was not hard. All of David Lynch’s films contemplate identity by exploring the sexual and emotional undercurrents that mold the outer shell of the human. However, Lost Highway most directly coincides with A Wild Sheep Chase, both pieces’ protagonists being confused males who are moved to action by the women in their lives. More than that, the form of both is non-linear and both seem to be working in two worlds simultaneously, the real and the imagined. These texts taken together work as supports for one another, which seem to build a house that is the torturous and enigmatic soul of man.
Both texts have a character that does not appear to be real but have a very real effect on the respective protagonists. Boku encounters many other-worldly characters, most importantly one that comes in the form of a sheep, while Fred meets the Mystery Man, an ominous man dressed in black with a ghost white complexion. The connection between these two periphery characters is that each might represent a part of the human they are confronting. The Sheep Man tells Boku, “Sorryforshouting... Sometimesit’
Another issue that both Murakami and Lynch address is sexuality as it pertains to the psyche. As discussed earlier, Boku has sex as a means to an end, not to nurture or develop a love relationship. This is his ultimate flaw, that he cannot fuse any emotion into his carnality, and on a larger scale, he fails to connect the spiritual to the material world. Fred’s problem is not so different. In a loveless relationship with his wife, he suspects her cheating on him. Again, the man’s concern lies in the act of sex, whether in its experience or the lack of it. The fact that neither Fred nor viewer discover her promiscuity renders the poignancy of the situation, that only a hint of suspicion drives a man to question his ability as a lover. At one point after Fred becomes suspicious and the two are making love, the wife matronly pats his hair, at which he becomes disgusted and pushes her aside. He later receives a videotape showing him killing his wife, the ultimate catharsis for man in taking back his masculinity. Whether he actually kills her or is simply imagining it all, his psychosis begins at this point. The power of her sex, then, seems to only work when the man knows he owns it. Just as Boku’s journey began in bed with his girlfriend, Fred too is inspired by the actions of his lover to start his transition.
These are just a few of the similarities among many between the texts. However, they get at the root of what affects man most deeply and what drives him to action. Both texts exist in some middle world between the conscious and the unconscious and the living and the dead. If anything can be ascertained by a dual reading of the two, it is that our psyches are fickle and dangerous, and that there is no separating them from our bodies.
Text-world
One topic not yet mentioned and plays a big role in the novel is politics. If Boku initially represents the comfortably conformed, then the Boss is the oppressor of souls that provides the nourishment for Boku’s kind. The Boss represents the capitalist structure as a whole, wherein the population is force-fed advertisements from the corporations that can most afford them. Likewise, the boss uses his fortune to buy power, the only thing that matters in a capitalist society. Without realizing it, the population becomes conditioned to believe in the financially elite’s superiority, and as well as becomes comfortable with the most recognized product on the market. In turn, they become dependent upon these products and people and have no sense of self-sustenance. The individual, then, begins to value things rather than other people; and it becomes a fight to gain that power back.
The tragedy of this structure occurs when consumers literally begin to act like animals, without regard for one another. Journalist Dan DiMaggio reacts to the death of a Wal-Mart employee who was trampled to death by shoppers on Black Friday this year, “It has nothing to do with humanity’s supposedly innate competitive, greedy, or materialistic nature. Corporations must create a market for the goods they produce, and they do this through massive amounts of advertising” (1) Like Murakami, he suggests that you cannot blame the sheep for following the shepherd, that the shepherd is accountable for their actions. He further posits,
“The capitalist system encourages values such as greed, selfishness, and competition. Corporations are forced to compete against one another in an endless quest to maximize profits for their shareholders, or else face bankruptcy. This forces them to slash wages and benefits, lay off workers, speed up work, squeeze their suppliers, and ignore the environmental impacts of production” (DiMaggio 1).
The levity with which the corporations treat their workers and the effect it has on the workers seems to be at the heart of Boku’s problem. He becomes jaded in the capitalist wheel: “Exploitation doesn’t exist. It’s a fairy tale. Even you don’t believe that Salvation Army trumpets can save the world, do you?” (Murakami 57). Essentially, the individual who does not educate himself becomes tired and jaded as he sees everyone around him grow richer, yet there is nothing he can do to better his situation. So he falls in line with the standards of the economy and finds a low paying job where he becomes more miserable just to scrape by. He no longer has the energy to break free from the herd, being too busy just keeping up with it. Luckily, Boku has just enough strength to make a self discovery in order to recognize his position before too late.
Not only does a capitalist society turn the working class into drones, it both physically and emotionally separates their families, as parents must work multiple jobs to make a living, leaving their children unattended or in the care of others. In effect, generations of children grow up with more attachment to their belongings, i.e. their videogame systems, than they have with their siblings or parents; just as Boku is more concerned with music, whiskey, books, and ears than he is with any human being. Boku symbolizes the child that grows up with no affection at home, whose family life was non-existent as a child and usurped by the objects in his life. However, the parents are not at fault for wanting to provide objects for their children. The government tells them to spend, even gives them free money to stimulate the economy, and they are deluged with advertisements for their children. The fundamental problem roots itself in the greed of the capitalist cowboys, not the acquiescent parents.
The separation that comes with earning a decent living comes with a sacrifice of not only physical and emotional relationships, but hinders spiritual relationships as well. This might even represent Boku’s greater problem, as he cannot believe that there remains any real good in the world. Boku becomes many things in this book, one of those being the identity of The Rat who writes to Boku, “…you come up with some likely name and life story. So that by now I’ve got a string of names and identities like you wouldn’t believe. At times I forget what I was like originally” (Murakami 90). This alter ego of Boku’s identifies with the anxiety that a capitalist citizen feels to be successful in life, so he must make up stories to make his life fascinating. In a world where one cannot be honest to self, there remains no place for a God or faith to strengthen one’s solidarity. The Rat tells Boku, “I enclose a novel I wrote. It doesn’t mean anything to me anymore, so do whatever you want with it” (Murakami 91). It appears that The Rat/Boku’s failing and cause for his anxiety and identity crisis might be his inability to be a successful, or a financially independent, writer. As a result, he must take a job as a copywriter to pay the bills. He has compromised his love, his only passion, and becomes just like any other person in the workforce, without a natural voice.
In conclusion, a capitalist system turns people against one another rather than bringing them together, as each faction of the whole fights for the biggest piece of the pie. The separation this creates works in a top-down model, trickling from the top of the power source to the very bottom of the well. Boku’s detachment from the world can be looked at as a direct result of the impotence he feels in an overbearing, high stress system that values money over art. However, Boku exemplifies that the struggle to overcome the conditioning can be possible. Just as an alcoholic can unlearn the habits of his disease, so to can the consumer or spoke in the capitalist wheel. Of course, as Boku finds out, no change comes easily,
“I went upstairs, took off my sweater, and burrowed under the covers. I was swept by alternating waves of chills and fever. With each wave the room would swell and contract my blanket and underwear were soaked in sweat, which congealed into a cold constricting skin” (Murakami 340).
By fighting the system and attempting to build a singular identity, Boku may finally find the spiritual and emotional freedom he has always lacked.
Works Cited
DiMaggio, Dan. “Death of Wal-Mart Worker - The System is to Blame.” The Socialist Alternative. 2 December 2008. 3 December 2008. <http://www.
Lost Highway. Dir. David Lynch. Perf. Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Robert Loggia, and Robert Blake. 1997. DVD. Universal Studios Home Video, 2008.
Murakami, Haruki. “A conversation with Haruki Murakami, author of Sputnik Sweetheart.” Interview with Random House Publishing. RandomHouse.com. 2001. <http://www.randomhouse.com/
Murakami, Haruki. A Wild Sheep Chase. New York: Vintage International. 1989.
e Hundred Years of Solitude seem to lack transitional periods, or rather the reader is not privy to they "whys" of their changes; we only see the outcome. Jose Arcadio goes away and comes back as an inked up version of "The Thing;" Aureliano goes from being a solitary, introverted scientist to the Liberal military leader. Jose Arcadio Buendia's personality is even more volatile than his sons'. This is especially difficult as a Western reader, who is used to knowing a character's intentions. In The God of Small Things, there is cause and effect. We understand that Estha's muteness is spawned from dramatic occurences in his childhood. In A Wild Sheep Chase, the narrator goes North to solve a mystery. I'm wondering whether character development is lacking for plot reasons or because Marquez is trying to assert the extreme capriciousness of a warring state; especially in the men. Something to think about.
