Murakami, Vonnegut, and Free Will- Max Bearinger

     Reading the excerpt from Breakfast of Champions, I really loved the quote, "Only Dwayne Hoover had free will." I was curious about free will in the works of Murakami, specifically if Boku or anyone in the stories we've read has free will. The first thing I thought of was the girl with the ears who knows that the phone call Boku receives will be about sheep. I thought of the sheep man and how he determined that the girl with the ears must leave the mountainside and home. "Surestuckourheadthroughthekitchendoorsaid better," an event and return to the dolphin hotel that feels fated. Then, I thought of the sheep with the star on its back and how it seems to rob the people it inhabits of their "will" and force them to do as it pleases. Even the secretary who works at the boss's company is described as having omniscient knowledge, “So he already knew everything.”  

    I felt I had a pretty compelling case to argue that free will does not exist in Murakami, but then I couldn't quite make sense of the Rat's suicide. His suicide is described as an intense moment of willpower over the sheep. After reading the portion of Hear the Wind Sing that described both Hartfield and the cosmic wanderer on Mars' suicides, both of which seem to be personal responses to external forces, I've amended my thesis to argue that none of Murakami's characters have free will except in the way they die.