The Mysteries of our Protagonists

     The Long Goodbye could indeed be considered the hypotext to A Wild Sheep Chase; there are certainly borrowed elements that the latter morphs into its own story. In particular, the two protagonists, Marlowe and Boku, are unwillingly sent on quests by authority figures that seem to operate at a higher level than our middling protagonists. In both cases, the result is preordained: Marlowe has been following the requests of Eileen Wade, a woman who created the inciting incident by killing Sylvia Lennox, and Boku discovers that the secretary who sent him on the quest already knew everything. This is a tried and true formula: a person who has made the protagonist dance turns out to have knowledge of everything, and in the most cliché fashion, they are the villain. It works particularly well because we experience everything from our protagonist's perspective; we share their knowledge and make our own guesses, which works especially well in a mystery novel. Sherlock Holmes does this with Moriarty, James Bond does this with innumerable "crime organizations." In all four cases, our protagonist operates as a cog in a machine with little knowledge of more powerful forces at play. Thus, it is all the more spectacular when our protagonist succeeds.

    In these two novels, however, our protagonists' mysteries seem to be preordained. Marlowe, who has routinely shown a disinterest in justice and the law, only wants to clear his friend's name. He comes into contact with Harlan Potter and Menendez, who operate as the aforementioned more powerful forces. He's ultimately only successful due to disinterest from Potter, and he is deus ex machina'd from Menendez's harm. Boku, who has consistently been dealing with a lack of information, is blackmailed into finding a sheep by someone who already knows the situation of the sheep. In both cases, the protagonist is in relatively the same spot as when they started, with only their discoveries to award them any merit. In Sherlock, he solves the case. In Bond, he gets the girl. In these two novels, they're left empty-handed. Well, they're given money as recompense, but neither character seems to interested in a monetary reward. That's where they differ from the stereotypical detectives: they're ordinary people who don't possess any special skills.

    Ultimately, these two protagonists are starkly similar: both are disillusioned figures on the fringes of society with their own guide for what's right and wrong, both find an old friend who's not the same as he once was, and both fail to find meaning in their quest. 

 James