Blog comments from Yennie

 A Wild Sheep Chase was my first Murakami novel. I’m not normally one to choose to read books from this genre, so really getting into the story was a bit difficult. I found the beginning of the book to be quite slow, and it was easy to put it down and forget about it for a few days. I didn’t feel drawn to continue reading. The slow beginning began to ramp up a bit, but I still had some trouble forcing myself to be engaged with the story.
Perhaps if I had found the introduction to the story more interesting, it would have been easier for me to immerse myself in the novel. I also felt that while the beginning was slow, the ending was packed into the last bit of the book and felt quite overwhelming. However, I did really enjoy the ending of the book, and it caused me to pause every few pages to digest and try to understand what Murakami was trying to impart.
I found this novel to be jam packed with different themes and hard-to-talk-about topics. I felt as though Murakami had so much he wanted to impart to his readers in this novel that he blurted them all out without allowing the reader to fully digest and process what was going on before moving onto the next theme.
Amidst the vast assortment of other themes, I think that what Murakami has to say about independence was eerily peaceful and insightful. The Rat kills himself in an attempt to free himself from the control of the Sheep. The Rat would rather be no longer and choose loneliness than allow himself to be part of a system where he has no freedom. I felt as though the Rat had no sense of individuality, and in this action he was overcompensating.