Stories with Bad Things & Mystery

1. In general, why do we tell and listen to stories in which bad things happen?

Yesterday I was having dinner with my two best friends on campus and one of my friends mentioned that she feels like she cannot identify with any of the girls in one of the particular sororities on campus. She recognized her bias was a problem and that it was based on preconceived notions she has about girls in this group, but she also knew it did not change the fact that she felt this way. “I look at [sorority name] girls and I think of weekend trips in Europe, designer bags, and perfectly manicured nails. Like, whose life is actually like that?” she said.

As she said this, this writing assignment actually came to mind. It does not seem like a coincidence to me that the result of my friend thinking that the girls in this particular sorority having really easy, extravagent lives is her not being able to identify with any of them. 

Regardless of whether our lives are objectively “easy” or “hard,” I think there is something about hardship that makes another individual relatable to us. We listen to stories in which bad things happen because they are stories that, for whatever reason, we feel connected to. It evokes a deeper emotional response in us than, “Oh, that’s nice for them,” and that response causes us to think about ourselves in relation to these issues and therefore challenge ourselves. This challenging might be to think about how different and good our experience is in comparison to this story and as a result recognize our privilege or it may be to come to terms with the similarities of our own experience with the bad one being shared and as as result embrace and move past our struggles and try to see them as empowering. Either way, the self-challenging that I feel occurs when a person reads a story with bad things occurring causes individuals to be drawn to them.

2. How does mystery drive this Murakami story?

If you follow the actual arc of Murakami’s story, not much actually takes place. In fact, many people might hear the plot, independent of the story, and wonder how it would keep a reader entertained for 15 pages. However, Murakami’s use of mystery drives the story forward by keeping the reader engaged. This happens in very specific instances in which Murakami sets up a question via mystery for the reader which they expect to have answered. The longer that question goes unanswered, often in very purposeful ways, the more that mystery is built into the story.

For example, the largest mystery in this story involves what is actually in the box that the protagonist agrees to  deliver. Because Murakami makes it a point to not only leave the contents of the box unknown and also point out the irregularity of Komura not knowing, a sense of ominousness is built. Murakami uses the convention of the assumed importance of things taking earlier in the story against the reader. Therefore, from the instance the reader is “kept in the dark” about the box, they assume that every other thing that seems out of place following will be tied back to this little box. When Komura is not offered the bear story immediately, when Shimao evades his questions, and in many other instances, a sense of tension is building for the reader because they expect all these things to answer the eventual mystery of what is in this box and perhaps, even, what happened to his wife.