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Week 3: A Wild Sheep Chase (#6 points)

  



Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase has a lot of metaphors and symbols. Because of its implications, I even felt like I was reading a long poem, rather than a novel. The adventure of chasing a sheep is maybe about our life. The sheep can be seen as some kind of ‘desire’ in our life. The main character who didn’t know what the sheep was, was forced to pursue the sheep by a man in a black suit. He didn’t even think he wanted a sheep but ended up chasing the sheep. He didn’t want to live such a life, but society drove him to pursue desires such as wealth, glory, and power. If someone chases only material possessions, it can cause the loss of more valuable things in our life.

   Rat said what makes us feel the gap between reality and ideal is the weakness of us. If we dream of 100 percent, we can achieve only 60 to 70 percent in reality. Maybe less than 10 percent. However, we strongly believe that we can close those gaps. I think it is inevitable to be possessed by a sheep. The process of chasing a sheep is sweet and happy. The more we believe we can catch a sheep someday, the sweeter it is. But one day, when we feel that we can’t catch a sheep when the moment we get weak, we can easily be collapsed. 


   I feel sad when the main character ‘I’, ‘rat’, and many other characters were collapsed while chasing the sheep. While I was reading this story, I kept putting myself into the characters’ situations. Do I have a sheep? Does chasing a sheep matter in my life? 

The novel tells us that when we have sheep, we can have infinite energy and extraordinary abilities. Perhaps in that regard, I think maybe my sheep had escaped. 

It is foolish to judge the existence of a sheep by age, but I think my sheep are disappearing as I get older. Once I achieve short-term goals and then I feel a sense of loss and emptiness as if I am back to square one, rather than feel a sense of accomplishment and a new desire for the next sheep. I am not sure that there is really an end of chasing a sheep, and this thought makes me feel tired. 


  Even in the novel, the main character chased the sheep all the time, but after finding the sheep, he felt indescribable emptiness. When we came back to reality, the fact that we chased the sheep feels like a dream, which makes us feel empty. This feeling comes from the gap between reality and ideal. Sometimes, an ideal can become a reality, but that moment is too short. I think in this adventure chasing a sheep, we have to try not to lose ourselves, our genuine goal and passion.

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