Postmodernism in “A Wild Sheep Chase”, the Novel by Haruki Murakami (Haruki Murakami'nin “Yaban Koyunun İzinde” romanında postmodernizm)

Abstract

The eminent representative of the modern Japanese literature, writer and translator, famous face of postmodernism, Haruki Murakami has started to play an important role in the national literature with his works since the begging of 1990s. The works of Haruki Murakami reflects a large period of Japanese way of thinking in the age of globalization. With his own specific direction of writing, he is one of the writers who have directly contributed to the development of the world postmodern literature, along with the Japanese literature. Introduced to the readers in 1982, the novel of “A Wild Sheep Chase” has laid the foundation of the postmodern style of Murakami. Combining the main characteristics of postmodernism such as chaos, synthesis, montage, collage, meta-story and etc., the novel links the alienation of an individual in the Japanese society to the nature of consumer culture and authoritarian-totalitarian regimes. Alienation, which is a characteristic for political ideology regimes aims at alienating individuals from the society, nature and from even themselves, their own true essence. The author has written down the process of a human turning into a post-human as a result of not tolerating to the pressures aiming to fit them into standardizing molds and depriving them from their differentiating characteristics. The unnamed hero of the novel, Boku looks for the meaning of the existence in his world that is full of questions. This search takes him back to the times before his birth. In order to find an answer, Boku looks for something to help him to leave the reality behind. As a result, he falls into a chaos, where people move in the directions that they have not chosen and do things that they do not desire, as well where the free will does not have any meaning.