It is a brown sheep with a star pattern on its back.
Why are you looking for this sheep?
Because sheep can enter people's bodies at will and control people's thoughts and behaviors, the dying leader of an underground organization is looking for the sheep that have left his body.
Why take risks?
Because the protagonist was inexplicably taken a photo of a sheep by his friend Mouse, he participated in the plan to find the sheep. If the sheep cannot be found, he will be in crisis.
On the surface, this is the outline of the story. However, Haruki Murakami's works always have many metaphorical parts, which require readers to understand by themselves. Just like this novel, as the last part of Murakami's Youth Trilogy, it obviously has a deeper connotation than the first two "Hear the Wind Sings" and "Marbles 1973".
The characteristic of Murakami's novels is that even if the story wants to express a deeper meaning, he will still use humorous, concise sentences and suspenseful ideas to attract readers to read with interest until they finish reading. There is a feeling of sudden enlightenment, and then falling into various metaphorical suspicions, which is very interesting. Similarly, the metaphors in "Kafka on the Shore" published by Murakami when he was 53 years old are also relatively difficult to understand.
After reading the entire novel, one thing impressed me deeply.
The opening chapter writes about many things that have nothing to do with sheep, such as the death of the girl who slept with everyone, the whale's penis, and divorcing his wife.
After divorcing his wife, the wife moved out of her own residence, which can be completely independent from the prose, especially when describing the wife's departure, she did not leave any thoughts about the skirt. He felt that his wife's departure did not leave any thoughts. There are too many feelings, as if everything is destined.
The light description hides many unavoidable things. This is Murakami's consistent writing style, without too strong emotions, as calm as boiled water, and occasionally a little bitter. Although there is no focus on depicting melancholy, the wife is mentioned many times in the following text, and the divorce is mentioned, so that he later has sex with a woman with beautiful ears, and then goes on adventures together, which also brings with it the feeling of fragmentation after divorce.
So, what does the sheep symbolize?
This magical sheep is not the docile lamb in the Chinese zodiac that we Easterners have in mind. In the eyes of Westerners, the sheep is a representative of evil. Murakami also said that he wanted to use this sheep as a metaphor for the Japanese Empire's overly rapid modernization process, rapid self-expansion, and even its invasion of other countries' territories.
Just as the novel describes the town of Twelve Falls in Hokkaido, which is the final destination where the protagonist searches for sheep. From the beginning, only a dozen pioneers cultivated it. Although life was hard but simple and happy, but later After slowly being ruled by the government, the population gradually increased. From the Twelve Falls settlement, to the Twelve Falls, to the Twelve Falls village, and then to the Twelve Falls, the government began to tax and recruit troops non-stop, and the government controlled more and more More and more, the process of modernization and the invasion of other territories. There are more and more controls, and the process of modernization has not increased the happiness of the residents, but has made life more difficult.
The evil sheep entered Dr. Sheep's body for the first time, but he did not have the ambition to expand and left soon. Later, it entered the body of a right-wing organization leader, launched an ambitious invasion, and once built a powerful underground kingdom, controlling politics, finance, public opinion, bureaucracy, culture and other fields.
There is a section in the novel where the protagonist is alone in an isolated mountain cabin waiting for the return of his friend Mouse. Music and books have always been recurring elements in Murakami's works. This reminds me of a description in "Kafka on the Shore". The protagonist lives alone in a hut hidden in the forest and has no time to think about anything else.
I often fantasize that if one day, I will choose a cabin by the lake, alone, without mobile phones and other communication devices, sit by the lake, feel the wind blowing on my face, and observe the surroundings Enjoy the natural scenery, listen to the chirping of birds, and let time flow slowly. The only thing to do is have books and music.
I once read a story. A businessman made a bet with a lawyer. If the lawyer could not touch anyone or anything, abstain from sex except for three meals a day, and stay in prison for ten years without going crazy, then he would be released normally. All property will be given to the attorney.
The lawyer's days in prison were very painful at first, isolated from the world, and he was in a daze all day long, not knowing what to do. But then he began to read the Bible and almost all the famous books in the world. It was completely different. He felt refreshed and even better than before he was imprisoned. Before he was about to be released from prison after ten years in prison, he decided to sneak out of the prison because he felt that he didn't care about winning or losing this gamble at all, and he didn't want to. It was sad to see a businessman give up all his property.
Therefore, books give humans a spiritual civilization, and this spiritual civilization is the support of the essence of life.
Of course, this is a digression from the search for sheep.
In the end, the sheep died, and the omnipotent evil sheep was finally killed by the cowardly mouse. This is a kind of irony, but it also shows that no matter how cowardly a person is, he can fight for his will, no matter how strong he is. The evil forces will eventually be eliminated.