Murakami's Out of Place Details - Mark

     Something really interesting to me that stuck out about Murakami after reading A Wild Sheep Chase is that he often uses specific, out of place details in his writing. The two core examples that stick out to me here are the parts about the Whale Penis and the Ears of the Narrator's Girlfriend. When I first read these I was baffled as oftentimes Murakami's writing tends to be mundane, incorporating aspects of everyday life and being fairly realistic without being overly descriptive, but here, these details distinctly stand out and showcase the character of Murakami's narrator, and they serve more of a purpose than just to throw the reader off. 

    Starting from the whale penis, I think its definitely something that Murakami intended to surprise the reader with as its such a specific strange thing, but the meaning behind it is more complex than it initially seems. Prior to this the rest of what the Narrator talked about seemed rather ordinary, but an emphasis is placed on this object as something special. The Narrator mentions how sad it was looking at the whale penis and how he thought it once belonged to a huge massive whale but now its just sitting in a poor state in a museum, and this kind of reflects how sometimes people or things have like failed to reach their potential perhaps or not lived up to what they were meant to be. Murakami mentioned he took huge inspiration from Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye and this sort of reminds me of Terry Lennox. Even though by the end of the novel he has on paper a good life, he took advantage of his friendship with Marlowe and he kept quiet about the murder of his wife in exchange for secrecy and protection, but in his own way like the whale penis which was just sitting in a museum without any real purpose anymore  he gave up the values he should have valued the most such as ensuring justice is met in the case of a murder and staying loyal to his friends, all so that he could stay in his villa in Mexico living a fake life with a fake appearance. 

    Finally, as for the Ears, once again its something that once mentioned, the narrator obsesses about despite the fact that he acts very grounded at other times. Its clear that the narrow sees that the ears have some sort of power and this kind of connects to common trait in Murakami's work that there is a hidden world or dimension in the sense of it being like magical or supernatural, since his girlfriend was able to help him search for the sheep.