The Character Evolution of Boku.

After finishing A Wild Sheep Chase, I feel like the story as a whole was to get Boku's life moving forward or to grow from the stoic attitude he had at the beginning to a more focused personality. At the beginning of the book Boku seems to acknowledge and accept the fact that his life is not advancing in any meaningful sort of way, and he doesn't have any desire to change that, even letting his wife leave him because of this fact. Even when things do start happening in his life, the meeting with his girlfriend with mystical ears and the task to find the star-patched sheep, he does not take these events as his life becoming more eventful, but more of something that's just happening to him. When the search for the sheep becomes more tied to his friend the Rat, Boku seems to take this as more of a coincidence rather than fate or destiny it seems, as he still retains his stoic attitude throughout this. It's only when he learns that he's essentially being played with by the Boss's Secretary and he knows that he's close to finding his friend that he shows genuine frustration. And this spout of anger contrasts with Boku from the beginning, where he basically accepted his life was going nowhere, and now after this whole search he feels like he's at the right place in the mountains with just enough time that he becomes frustrated that his search has come to a dead halt, that it's going nowhere. And I take this change in attitude from Boku as more of a sign that something that he's become personally invested in has stopped, and the fact that he seems personally invested in something as the true change in character from Boku. I feel this is also emphasized at the end of the book where he asks to become a co-partner to J's bar, which I would say is a new personal interest in his relationship with J, probably something that he wants to strengthen after learning the Rat is dead. So the whole search has given Boku a new sense of purpose to his life that he didn't have before and now he has an active interest in doing things in his life or at least improving the life of those around him.

-David Barnes