Assignment Week Three: A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami (6 points)

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            A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami was the book I have read for this week. The book, at first, I thought was slow. However, when I looked more into it and finally finished it. This wasn’t because the book was slow, it was because it was a different type of horror. A Wild Sheep Chase is a psychological horror. Most of the horror aspects are coming from inside the main character’s head.

            The main thing I have realized reading this, besides the psychological aspect. The events throughout the book is random and unexpected. I had reread certain things because they were so unexpected, I thought I skipped something. The book is mostly about a guy feeling trapped in his own life and wants to continue life and his career how he wants to and feel joy coming out of it. Instead of his old, rusty, wheel cycle of life.

In horror, even in psychological horror, you would find something like gory or suspenseful. However, this book is mostly about the main character turning away from the life he has known to a new one, with mostly looking into his inner turmoil of himself and his own life. Two moments show this through the mirror scenes. Where he is like two different people at that point, his mind isn’t connected to his body anymore. Reading more I realized that most of the characters that have names are the animals and that a lot of the focus is on them and the main character towards the middle and end.

I saw these animals as voices in the main characters he has created. However, I also see them as types of spirits or metaphors for different aspects of the book. For example, the sheep is like a metaphor for Japanese society and the rat was the one who gave the main character the photo, but seems very connected to the protagonist mentally. In japan it is not uncommon nor unknown that people have either committed suicide or actually worked themselves to the point of death. Thus giving clarity to why the main character would want to leave and do something else, but also shows the impact of a society as a whole. This differs from the European and American works because one the psychological horror is different with how they present it, as well as the social values of each country. It’s not a normality for people to die from work but in japan it is a sad truth.

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