Stagnation in "A Wild Sheep Chase"

*Author's note: This blog started out with a direction, but its ending goes in various directions. "A Wild Sheep Chase" doesn't provide a poor girl with many answers to work with. Thus follows...Stagnation in "A Wild Sheep Chase"

Stagnant. According to www.freedictionary.org (my favorite dictionary due to its free-ness), stagnant is defined as showing little or not sign of activity or advancement and not developing or progressing. As the title of this blog suggests, stagnation plays a fairly large part in Murakami's novel. There can be several aspects of the novel that give the reader the idea that the novel is not moving, not going anywhere worth being. These aspects include the presence of time and the attitude that Boku takes on his life.

Time isn't a focal point for this novel; it doesnt provide transitions for the novel, it moves back and forth and changes perceptions with the different character viewpoints, and the reader is often unsure of their orientation in time when following Boku. Time here is stagnant. Not moving. Boku seems to be content with this lack of movement and activity. In the text, he says that he finds himself looking for new ways to remain supremely bored. Boku is also given a month deadline to find this sheep or suffer "dire consequences" (quotations are in order because the consequences are unnamed, yet are presented as most fearsome...), yet he doesn't mind taking his time on with accomplising things - he goes to movies, continues to drink, and reads what he himself terms as the "most useless tomes" of an "intellectual's required reading" (p. 284). Boku doesn't mind (if I may employ the cliche) wasting time.

It appears as both universal time itself as well as Boku's inner clock are not moving. Stagnant.

Clearly this is not the case. Despite the lack of time references and Boku's adversion to stepping out of his box, time continues to go on. New events and places are shown to the reader and Boku continues to come into contact with different people, all who have an impact on him. Boku doesn't want to change his personality, but cannot but help to do so when he is put into contact with these different events (going up North, meeting the Sheep Man, etc.). I would like to focus on Boku's unwillingness to acknowledge the passage of time. Does a person's unwillingness to come to terms with the movement of time make time itself stop?

No.

Time and the world will continue to move. Just because a person wants things to remain changeless doesn't mean that they will. They never do. Furthermore, without having the passage of time explicitly marked, the reader can still see the passage of time in other ways. Boku often sits out of life too much, but just because he wants time to stand still doesn't mean it will. Eventually, he's going to have to get past his idea that time will stand still just because he doesn't know whatelse to do with the world around him.