There were a series of ten pages (a few more actually, but for this assignment, I kept it to ten) that I would like to talk about starting with page 71. This page was about the metaphysical aspects of life. It tried to link the past with the present and how they can correlate with each other. Yet it also draws on bleakness on how this face-off leads to no where. I like this in part because I see a lot of truth to this. Do we as individuals learn from our past? Not all of us, obviously, but I would like to think most of us do and try to adapt that learning into our life.
On page 79, it reminded me of one of my earlier blogs and my concern about this book being a living dream. There were phrases on dreams being symbolic and having metaphors. This again, touches on interpretations and trying to figure out what is going on around us.
To page 94, I want to talk about time. In most dreams, time seems to not be a factor or stands still. There was a phrase that caught my eye about how time is really a big continuous cloth and how habitually we are when it comes to acting out on time. We are very much programmed when it come to how we live and how we let time get to us. This can mean, for example, being late for school or to not being where you want to be in life. Time can be a very scary thing.
When I came to page 114, the main character, Boku was questioning his own detachment to the world. He was becoming self aware that the world would go on without him and he was trying to deal with this feeling. He compared it to the tortoise and the elephant and their own lack of awareness of each other. I thought this was an interesting comparison with two very different animals. The difference can be considered a class thing with the haves and the have not’s where one seems to be more powerful and the other not so much.
To page 127, this is where my favorite character entered, the Strange Man. The shrewdness, I thought, when he came to Boku with these words: “Now people can be generally classified into two groups: the mediocre realists and the mediocre dreamers. You clearly belong to the latter. Your fate is and will always be the fate of a dreamer.” Boku took notice of this statement and I did too. I was, at the time of reading this, still struggling with the notion of this book being a dream-state of mind type. Are we in a dream ourselves?
When I came to page 133, the Strange Man talks about Marxism and here is where I understand his political views and how he felt Marxism was very mediocre because it lacks the sense of one person or group being superior to another. I take it that he felt that this was supposed to be. He seemed to believe that there had to be a superior being, not God, but someone who could lead the masses or a rank of file if you will, that should be on a higher level than others. Personally, that seemed to be a bit cut off on other people’s feeling and how they can contribute and not allowing them to grow, but to keep them down for the greater good of this so called superior group or person.
To page 178 thru 179 of the book, Boku’s discussion with the religious chauffer about the name of Boku’s cat. This struck me because this was maybe the best example of how alone Boku really was in life. He had been thru two women already that he barely cares to remember, on his third currently and then the only constant in his life is his cat. The same cat he has not even given a thought about naming. He goes thru life like he is the center of the universe and with that thinking; he can not grow because he can not learn from himself.
The final pages I want to talk about are pages 346 and 348, the final meeting between Boku and The Strange Man. Here is where we find out why Boku was chosen for the assignment and why he was needed. The Strange Man was very calculated to this point and very cold I may add. He explained how Boku and the way he went thru life made him a perfect target for this. Boku has been going thru life without emotions, or lack expressing them anyway. To draw out the sheep, the Strange Man needed a blank slate so the sheep would have no fear into being interested enough to come out of hiding, but not so much as to enter Boku’s body. In a way, this is a very sad commentary on Boku, which in part is why he cried in the end. He realizes how empty he is, soulless even. I would like to end on a happy note for him. As he pulled out and heard the explosions, he realized that he may be mediocre, but he was content. That though, could be sad in a case of not growing from this or not, which the class was not sure. This concludes step three.
In step four, to respond to my ten pages, I needed to use a literary theorist that I thought would be good for my pages here. That choice is Frantz Fanon. I will try to point out the way people need to be more connected to grow and see what is going on. We can not continue in a dazed state and expect to grow just like Boku’s lack of growth showed. Looking at Fanon’s most famous book, The Wretched of the Earth, this book talks about how to deal with post-colonialism and what are some of the steps to be done. Now, why would I choose Fanon to compare the pages I chosen you might ask? Fanon talks about Marxism, which the book and its antagonist, The Strange Man pointed out from his point of view was a sense of mediocrity. He seemed to believe that there should be a higher group controlling things if not even a person. Fanon believed in a different interpretation of Marxism influenced by third world countries perspectives. He worried about colonialism and how the effects can have on those colonies. It’s like the comparison to the tortoise and the elephant. We have here two different groups of people, the ones who believe that colonization is a key in helping those they believe are not equal to or inferior, yet we have a group who might not need this help or if they do, what happens to their culture? In A Wild Sheep Chase, what I had gather from this book and the pages I’d chose are the facts that we must be able to wake up our own consciousness to discover and grow as people. If we continue to go about things with a sense of disconnection, then we fail to understand other’s plight and how we can help them correctly. I feel that Boku’s society was unchanged in part because of indifference. People tend to accept things as they are and move about like sheep. They are so busy with their own struggles and challenges that they do not have the time to stop and think as they should. We are at times, a slave to this. It seemed that the Strange Man wanted to be a leader and use the sheep entity to help him with that goal. If he had succeeded, would he have enough influence to change things? If so, would it have been for the best? Arrogance of one person or one country being able to judge what they can do to change things is very troublesome. Now with most postmodernism writing, this book, Sheep, was about conditions that exist in today’s society and how we may need to look at ourselves. When I think of this, I think about Fanon’s attempt to help change the way we think as well. We need to awaken and reconnect to the masses of all to better ourselves.
In a way, postmodernism is a protest to what is troubling society. There are many forms of this media. Music can be one. Many have protested on what they see, whether it slavery, or abolition, to women’s rights, to wars and racism. My favorite was a song done by the late great Marvin Gaye, titled, “What’s Going On”. This song was from the perspective of a Vietnam vet who came home and discovered how things have not change for the better since he left for war. Disrespected by people who could not understand why we fought in a war that was deemed wrong and seeing how we treated not only people but the world as far as pollution, police brutality, violence and so forth, it was a portrait on how we need to change our way of thinking. Murakami had many influences and Gaye was one of them. Murakami, like Gaye, Fanon, Bob Dylan and many others have tried to express what they see and awake the masses from their sleep or dream like state of mind to realize what needs to be done. In Boku’s moment in the cabin, he finally was awakening thru solitude. When he realize that he must act even if it was an unconscious thought or something place there thru his friend, the Rat, he acted and I believe that we must awaken to resolved the issues that goes on in the world. The best line or at least one of them in the book was this on page 348 when Boku realize what he had to do and why: “No matter how boring or mediocre it might be. This was my world.” This statement tells a lot about how one must act when they see something wrong, but there is a flip side to this. One must be careful not to act wrongly or it could have bad consequences like what Fanon thought and wrote in the chapter, “The Pitfalls of National Consciousness“. One more point, I know it is easy to say but harder to do. If you feel connected to something, then you feel compelled to due something. Uzodinma Iweala’s, Beast of No Nation, which I was torn to write about as well, touch on some of these aspects. Iweala also criticize those who help just for the fun or the popularity of it. I agree that can seem immoral and I think going back to Sheep, disconnected. This is the end of step four.
As I was preparing to search for an article to finish step five, I came across an issues that has that has been going on more surprisingly than one might think, WMD or weapons of mass destruction. With a new administration coming to the White House, I saw an article where Vice President-elect, Joe Biden talks to reporters about how WMD is still an issue and that there is a report that states if we do not stop this soon, there is a real threat of terrorists using such weapons by 2013. He’s quoted in saying, “We’re not doing all we can to prevent the world’s most lethal weapons from winding up in the hands of terrorists.” This report, details of which leaked out before its release on Wednesday, was mandated by Congress last year in line with recommendations by an earlier commission on the September 11 attacks by al Qaeda militants in 2001. It warned that "unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013. “ The attack was more likely to be biological than nuclear, it said. A source involved with the report said the attack could be as small as a single anthrax-tainted letter. The report recommended steps that included tightening supervision of U.S. biological laboratories, strengthening international nuclear nonproliferation agreements and discouraging financial incentives for civilian nuclear power. It also called for a threat of "direct action" to back up diplomacy aimed at stopping Iran and North Korea from developing a nuclear arsenal. But the report drew skepticism from at least one potential member of the Obama administration. "It's time to retire the fear card," said Democrat Jane Harman, head of a Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence and terrorism risk in the House of Representatives. Harman, seen as a potential pick by Obama for a top intelligence post, said Congress had already taken significant steps. Commission member Henry Sokolski, a former senior Defense Department nonproliferation official, wrote in an "additional views" paper on the commission's website that he feared the report gave too little attention to preventing more countries from acquiring nuclear weapons, which he called the most significant near-term danger. Now, this is very concerning because I thought WMD was something we could all agree on, but apparently that is not the case. As I read this, I think about a few things. First, I think about time. We think because we might not have found something like WMD, we are ok and let’s move on. Hearing this, makes me feel like time has not really move in that we still are dealing with this. Yet, maybe if you do nothing or not enough, then things continue like a dream where it will not stop until you wake up and do something. In this case, if we do nothing, we could see a devastating effect on our society. The frightening thing about this is how we are supposed to treat this threat seriously because it can affect us. Now, imagine how we treat something that does not directly affect us, like say Darfur? Are we so busy about other issues or better yet, unattached that we do not see the world going on without us noticing it? The more I think about it, it is scary to think that people who are paid for our protection are too busy and unattached to the situation that they are arguing with themselves to try to find a common ground. When Boku acted in a sense of urgency to do something, we must do that too. The other problem is apathy. Can people do something when they have apathy about things they see? Boku went thru his life detached but why? That was my real question in Sheep, why? Was it Murakami’s statement that we do only when it’s necessary? History has shown this to be true. My hope is that with a new administration, things will change. I guess I have the “Audacity to Hope”. This is the end of my term paper.
Bibliography: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081204/pl_nm/us_usa_security_obama_biden
A Wild Sheep Chase, by Haruki Murakami
The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon
Beast of No Nation, Uzodinma Iweala
What’s Going On, by Marvin Gaye
The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama
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