Skip to main content

A Wild Sheep Chase: Analysis

A wild sheep chase: Analysis

The main problem for the main character is that he exhibits a lack of motivation. This is why his wife leaves him, why he chooses to eat at bars, and why he continues to work at a job he isn’t exactly interested in with his old alcoholic college friend. In the end of the book it is even shown that he is actually a very good cook so he chooses to go out and eat bar food.
An interesting parallel is the ear model woman. The main character sees her ear once, and then eventually becomes infatuated with it. So much so that he has to track her down to satisfy himself. This is exactly what happens with those who see or experience the star sheep. They become entirely infatuated with it and spend the rest of their lives tracking it down. They are a changed as a person and cannot rest until they find it. So much so that the Sheep Professor starves himself once he knows he will never find the sheep again. 
The sheep’s host can accomplish almost anything. The book references Genghis Khan and how the star sheep that was inside him enabled to take over almost all of Asia. It is referenced that the sheep grants immortality to it’s host. The ear model serves as a similar divide to the main character. His life is uneventful and he is lacking motivation. People call him a dreamer, where he has potential but will never reach it because that is the kind of person he is. Once he meets the girl his life is thrown out of order. She convinces him to go on this ‘Wild Sheep Chase’. He wasn’t going to do it at all if it wasn’t for her. During his time with her looking for the sheep he accomplishes a great deal. He scales a crumbling mountain. He gains an intense sum of money. He is able to eventually track down the sheep and help a friend ensure that the spirit or god of the star sheep dies. However, throughout his time with his girlfriend, he criticizes her. He constantly said he didn’t want to go, wanted to give up after the first day, was upset at her for choosing a certain hotel, and did little in the way of talking to and spending time with her. All of the people who were possessed by the sheep claim that, if you didn’t realize your potential while the sheep was in you, it would leave. You would no longer be useful to it. She leaves him when he is on the mountain. 

Once the adventure is complete and he goes back home his life returns to normal. He no longer has to work because of his money but his life is still just as average as it was before. He is still just as unmotivated and unaccomplished as he was when he left to find the sheep. Only now he realizes what he had and what it means to have lost it. He goes to the sea and cries, realizing that he will never again experience the feel of fulfillment and success that he did on that journey. He had lost his sheep. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chine Mieville's New Weird

We see new weird unabashedly taking on current and controversial issues. We look at China Mieville's "Polynia" which discusses the early like of a boy growing up in London after something extraordinary happens. Enormous and very real ice bergs float over London on a horizontal plane in the sky. Though they tend to make the ground colder wherever they pass over, they seem to face no threat other than dropping the occasional small piece of ice on the land below. Enormous pieces break off but continue to float on their horizontal suspension. Through the boy's research we learn that all over the world other things are happening. In Brazil coral thought to be extinct now grows out of water on all of the government buildings. In Japan the undergrowth of the rainforest takes over and destroys factories. All over the world it seems that countries who have destroyed enormous natural creations are now being plagued by their reoccurring presence. Another of Mieville’s “Covehith...
2 comments
Read more

Hobbit Analysis

Surprisingly captivating, The Hobbit is a wonderful example of fantasy literature. It encompasses a very well built world view while never revealing too much and allowing the reader to slowly develop their perception of middle earth. As we follow Bilbo, we are slowly introduced to an incredible and very odd world. Bilbo is very similar to us as we are very unaccepting or at least judgmental of a world so different than our own. So as Bilbo is thrown into this fantastic adventure that drastically changes his life, we too are now thrown into a world than demands to be acknowledged. As bilbo is gradually brought into the ever more and more dangers of the world outside the shire, we too are slowly introduced to the people and circumstance of the environment. Something else that is done exceptionally well is the history and effects of past action. While some of the history is simply “long long ago” (as is seen too much in too many fantasy stories) many of the events are put into persp...
1 comment
Read more

Fiction of Ideas_And I Awoke and found me here on the Hill's Side

     James Tipree Jr's And I Awoke and found me here not he Hill's side takes place in a loading/unloading area with a bar in it- in a future where the universe is riddles with all different and communicated Aliens and Alien planets. The older man in the story appears to be an older version of the main character. They discuss the amount of work it takes only to get this far out into space. How much education, money, work, and degrees it takes only to clean and do maintenance in a relatively close section of space. It seems humans in this world put all this effort and money and time into these degrees to get these jobs just so they can see aliens. It almost seems as a drug or an addiction- as if someone could be addicted to something without ever having even seen it before. They talk about humanities need to capture everything different and yet the argument is that its too much. That all of the aliens are so different that its overwhelming. That humans no longer have anyt...
1 comment
Read more