53 pages • 1 hour read
Haruki MurakamiA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The sheep that the narrator is searching for is described in vague but foreboding terms, by the people whom it has inhabited. The Rat tells the narrator that the sheep desires “a realm of total conceptual anarchy”(225); the Sheep Professor tells him that the sheep has “[a] monumental plan to transform humanity and the human world” (223). The Boss’s secretary–speaking for the Boss, who has also been inhabited by the sheep–tells the narrator that the sheep is “a v-e-r-y special sheep” (144).
Ordinary farm sheep also appear in this novel, and the narrator finds something eerie in their blankness and stolidity: “Their eyes were an unnatural blue, looking like tiny wellsprings flowing from the sides of their heads […] They all stared at me. They seemed to think as a group” (257-58). Sheep are the ultimate herd animal, and are not known for their individual will, let alone for the sort of ultimate will that the Rat and the Sheep Professor describe. They are also an animal that is non-indigenous to Japan, and that never quite thrived in Japan; in this way, they are a reminder of some of the country’s failings and missteps.
By Haruki Murakami
1Q84
1Q84
Haruki Murakami
After Dark
After Dark
Haruki Murakami
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Haruki Murakami
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Haruki Murakami
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Haruki Murakami
Kafka on the Shore
Kafka on the Shore
Haruki Murakami
Killing Commendatore
Killing Commendatore
Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood
Norwegian Wood
Haruki Murakami
South of the Border, West of the Sun
South of the Border, West of the Sun
Haruki Murakami
Sputnik Sweetheart
Sputnik Sweetheart
Haruki Murakami
The Elephant Vanishes
The Elephant Vanishes: Stories
Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami, Transl. Jay Rubin
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Haruki Murakami