Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase explores the concept of time in many ways. From one of his letters, Rat writes "Time keeps on flowing unchanged like a clear river" (94). Time is intangible, no exact form or anything. Therefore, people try to reflect time based on tangible items like the weathering of a building or the concentric rings in trees. Alone in the middle of nowhere in Hokkaido, Rat does not have anyone or anything to reflect time upon. The concept of time becomes even more intangible without anything to test it, if that makes sense. For example, when Boku stays in Rat's house, he understands the reason Rat keeps the house so clean, because "Unless you kept moving up here, you'd lose all sense of time," which is why the house feels unreal, like another world (291). Time seems to be part of reality. In other words, the concept of time keeps us feeling real or vice versa. However, spending time all by oneself may cause a false sense of time. Every day is the same. The lack of contact with other humans or outside world makes Boku lose a sense of time: "I suddenly realized that this was the first time, in what now seemed like years, that I had seen a newspaper, and that I'd been left behind an entire week from the goings-on of the world" (307). It's interesting how Boku describes that he feels abandoned from the world because he has not read the news, or been in communication with society. Maybe we can say through connecting with others or the society, we are consciously aware of the fact that we have spent time, and therefore can feel the time. Murakami explores the concept of time by showing the impact that a lack of interactions with the outside world has on one's sense of time. (Xiaoya)
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