Murakami and Camus

 Murakami's writing has a very dream-like quality to it. Reading it feels like a surreal experience, and I'm not always able to tell what is actually real and what isn't. I'm not always sure if I am toeing the line to another world, or if the two worlds coexist together and floating between the two is the journey Murakami wants to take us (the readers) on.

When I first read A Wild Sheep Chase, I took many things at face value and simply accepted the absurdity of whatever was happening. However, I feel that as we begun to analyze it more in class, I found that digging deeper into the meaning of certain things made the experience of reading it much richer. Why does his girlfriend have special powers? What is going on with the Rat and the house Boku lives in towards the later parts of the book? What does the sheep with the mark on its back actually represent? Murakami gives no clear answers and sometimes no hints at all, leaving it all up to the reader's personal interpretation.

In A Wild Sheep Chase, Murakami touches on themes of loneliness and alienation. The magical realism elements of it, for me, also bring into question the meaning of existence, for Boku and the other characters around him. I feel as though Murakami challenges the notion of reality and questions what it means to exist in this world, all from the perspective of Boku who is somewhat distant, passive, and emotionally detached. 

I'm not sure whether Camus had a direct influence on Murakami, but I personally find both authors to echo similar themes and ideas. Reading about Boku's journey reminded me of Meursault from L'étranger, who also emotionally detached and is seemingly just drifting through life and the world around him — both in universes that offer no clear meaning. Both characters seem to just live within the moments that are happening to them (though Meursault does later go on to truly question existence at length in the second half of the novel). In my opinion, both characters reach some sort of tipping point that acts as a catalyst for a big change in their life, after which they begin changing the way they think or act. I find that while Meursault's inner change is more dramatic, Boku is more similar to how he was at the beginning of the novel, but still retains some transformative elements to his character.

Murakami is known for having existentialist themes throughout his works, and I am curious to see how these are presented in his works we will read in the future.

Ananya Jain