Birthday Girl by Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami’s Birthday girl is one of the most confusing yet thought-provoking short stories  I have ever read. Before reading this story I thought, that this is gonna be some kind of story about a birthday girl and that she is gonna have this problem which she would eventually solve in the end. A typical short story in a way. Then I remembered that this was a Murakami story, my brother once mentioned that his stories no matter how basic the plot it always seems to make the readers keep turning the pages and in the end the readers will ask themselves, "What in the world just happened? There has got to be some kind of  mistake in the book?". 

As I read this story, I was utterly confused on what was really going on. I didn't know who the main character was talking to? Why did it seem like the point-of-view was changing? What and where is the conflict here? I found the arrangement or the flow of the story rather confusing as it was moving from conversation to description then to the continuation of the conversation again.

When I finished reading the story  for the third time, I realised that this Japanese author was an artistic genius. This man got me thinking that the main character would simply go up to the manager's room and vent out her problems like working on her birthday but then rather then venting, she goes up and gets a wish. I would gladly be a room service waiter if I could get a wish everytime I enter a room on my birthday. The repetition of the lines towards the latter part of the story were very meaningful to me, "Bumpers are for denting." and 'No matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves.'" The first line spoke to me saying that life has it's imperfections and we have to accept that. The latter line, I think, says that no matter how much time changes us we will always remain the same in the core. That no matter how much we stray from our true selves, we will always go back as if we were leashed to it. No matter what we wish for, we will always be what we were set out to be.

 The one thing that really got me thinking was what the girl wished for. I saw no clues on what it could have been, the vague-ness of how she answered the questions certainly did not help. But I think the purpose of the author for not answering the question to what the main character really wished for, was to make the readers actually question themselves to what they would wish for given the opportunity. The last line, " That's because you've already made your wish." really confused me. Does this line mean that in every question brought upon us, we already have some sort of answer in our head yet we're too afraid or shy to say it?

This story can be considered a short story because of the conflict. The story revolved around the conflict of her having to work on her 20th birthday. Even though it was not said through text, it can be implied that she felt miserable with the addition of her recent quarrel with her long time boyfriend. Work was very slow that day due to the heavy rains and she could have spent the night doing something better. This problem was resolved with her being able to have one wish. That one wish I think made her happy and not miserable for the time being. I asked a couple of friends of what they thought her wish was, and they said that she wished for the wish of not having anymore wishes. I thought about it and it can fit. That without having anymore wishes she can live a life without looking for something in her life that she needs to correct. She wont have the opportunity to fill the whole in her life. She will accept her faults and live through it. I think that is what Mr. Murakami was trying to tell us through this story.