“A Wild Sheep Chase” by Haruki Murakami
After reading “A wild sheep chase” by
Haruki Murakami, I was left with a sad understanding of his novel. Something
that I greatly appreciate about his writing style in this particular piece is
the fact that he only gives you enough information about the characters to
understand their place in the novel. Many authors chose to exaggerate and
detail their writings to keep the reader engaged with a mental picture. This
was such an interesting read because instead of mental imagery and personal
connection with the characters, we are fully immersed into the scene as if we
are there.
We understand the narrator motives
and desires but we never get close to him or the others in the piece. We also never know the main characters first
name which is extremely bold. I believe
that this is a directly related to the different cultural aspects of the
author, Haruki Murakami compared to what we may be use to in English literature
and western horror or gothic. We usually get all of the information at once but
Japanese culture is much more deep and mysterious in their concepts. Similar to
the fact that the other characters in the book have mysterious motives and are
actually spirits communicating to the narrator.
We also never know why the events
in his life happened in him. We just know the minimum facts like he is
divorced, lives a lonely life, and has a girlfriend who we never know an
immense amount about. We never even find out if she was murdered, taken away,
or simply a spirit of the sheep as well. This is all directly tied into the
eerie spiritual sense of this entire novel. I felt as if I was reading a sacred
story of many souls that have spoken to this one narrator and particularly enjoyed
it more than western and English horror. I believe that this makes the work of
horror more successful, when we are lured
in by the words and not simply told every detail about the piece. We as an
audience want to be seduced into a novel and Haruki Murakami did just that with
his beautiful example of Japanese horror.
I think among J-Horror a common theme is only giving enough information to understand the story. That being said, I often feel that I'm left asking more questions. While I may read or watch and understand the story at hand, I want to know more about the character's past and what happens next. J-Horror films should definitely be put under the "New Weird" category because they either have a story with some moral presented at the end or are just weird!
ReplyDelete