On the surface it is paradoxical that Ōe Kenzaburō …, a spokesman for the Japanese New Left, admirer of Mao, and student of Sartrean Existentialism, should give thematic treatment to anything quite so traditional as the notion of "shame," a complex emotional response to a variety of situations in Japanese society. Although very much the modern writer and liberated from many of the complexes that burdened older literary figures such as Tanizaki Jun'ichirō and Mishima Yukio, Ōe, in the short story "Sheep," directly confronts the experience of shame with power, subtlety, and insight. Whereas other major Japanese writers generally deal with shame as incidental to their primary thematic concerns, only as part of the psychological makeup of their characters, Ōe pushes his creations headlong into shameful situations where reader and characters are afforded a deeper insight into the nature of shame, and at times a full-fledged revelation occurs in which the self is strengthened and achieves a new identity through the ordeal. The originality of Ōe's achievement in his young career lies in the fusion of shame in its traditional setting, calling for a traditional interpretation, with an understanding of shame informed and shaped by Sartrean Existentialism, with its implications for the self in the world. (p. 409)

The soldiers … use the young man and his fellow victims as a means to an end: that of venting their anger and as an object of amusement. This is a constituent in the structure of shame, to become an instrument of possibilities that are not our possibilities. But what is crucial in the case of the soldiers is that the incident begins and ends spontaneously. While the humiliated victims existed as objects for them,… the motivation for their behavior does not extend beyond the simple emotions of amusement and anger….

The school teacher perceives the victims as a means to a loftier end, a moral aim. The "innocent" spontaneity of the incident disappears [with his effort] to communicate the shame to the world at large…. The desire on the part of the victim to hide what has been revealed, to hide what one is at the moment, conforms to our own experience and [is] … peculiar to the nature of shame. Any threat to this desire to remain hidden is normally an occasion for unpleasantness. Thus the teacher has done violence to the nature of shame, as one insensitive to its implications, and has oddly turned out to be the "villain" of the piece, although some readers may have divided sympathies. The desire of the school teacher to expose the young man's shame in a broader context is likewise linked to what Sartre calls l'esprit de serieux in that values are considered as "transcendent givens independent of human subjectivity." The teacher ignores human subjectivity and seeks to manipulate the young man in order to assign a value to the incident that ultimately derives from an abstraction external to the concreteness of the situation: that of social justice. (p. 413)

Imagery [in the story] not only creates atmosphere, but also functions structurally, as a dynamic element clustering around and anticipating attitudes and actions within the narrative. The abstract framework of the story, however, is dualistic; and this is seen in its composition, where the story naturally falls into two parts: events involving the soldiers and then when the teacher begins his attempt to impose his will on the young man. The brief stasis when the soldiers have left forms a natural hiatus before the second half of the story begins. Also, as has been suggested, the Sartrean dualistic view of consciousness may be inferred as a basis of analogy for the dualistic structure. The interplay of opposites is also seen in the Japanese vs. the foreign soldiers, victims vs. observers, passivity vs. activity, and also quite importantly in the divided sympathies of the reader. The teacher appears in a negative light, and although to a certain degree we share his moral outrage, our emotional sympathies are with the young man and the second ordeal he is forced to undergo at the hands of the teacher. The last and most pregnant pairing of opposites involves Japan vs. the outside world. The story as an allegory pointing to Japan victimized and humiliated during the Allied Occupation cannot be overlooked. But what is represented is more the psychological climate of the times rather than a political call-to-arms. (pp. 414-15)