woaijf ;aj

“woaijf ;aj”

aka a response to conflicts and Murakami’s “UFO in Kushiro”

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You probably took one look at the title of this blog post and disregarded it as an error. A mistake. Maybe even the product of an unfortunate hand spasm. Still, I’m going to hazard a guess that before you ignored it, this blog post title still caught your eye. Why wasn’t it like the other blog titles on here, which do consist of letters placed in a logical order?

I believe this strange analogy illustrates part of the reason why we humans keep telling and listening to stories with conflict. It’s not like we’re closet masochists who take pleasure in seeing poor fictional characters suffer. Not entirely, anyway. Rather, we are beings who tend toward our own visions of what is good and ideal. For the most part, we’re always trying to solve problems – always trying to make our lives easier – because we desire what will make us happy, comfortable, and secure. In working towards such a goal, we engage in different problems and obstacles along the way.

In some ways, the existence of problems within a human life is what makes that life a human one – and not a divine life. Our problems make us human – make us real.

Given that notion, the more “realistic” a story is – the more it dares to engage with problems that must be solved – the more we are drawn to them. When reading stories, our minds constantly work to identify what is wrong with the world we choose to engage ourselves with. Once that identification has been made, once our attention has been attracted by a problem, we sit down, and are sold for the journey. And the more we can relate to that conflict, the more we are inclined to listen.

Regarding Murakami's "UFO in Kushiro" – mystery drives the story ever further by generating nothing but question after question after question. All the unanswered questions that Murakami sows are akin to problems, are they not? If an ideal world is a world without problems – without questions – then our fallen world is a world with many problems – and many questions. “UFO in Kushiro” resembles our fallen world, particularly with the different conflicts rife in this short story.

The fact that we are able to relate to Komura’s search for purpose, an uninterested spouse, and maybe even his lacking sex drive, only draws us in closer into Murakami’s story. The more we can relate, the more we like a story. And this is what drives Murakami’s story. We identify with it.

I especially believe that we are drawn to stories because – beyond hoping to be entertained by a tawdry love triangle involving a vampire, a werewolf, and Bella Swan – we hope to find some answer to the problems we have in our own lives. Stories, after all, are reflections of the human experience. We have problems. We want to solve them. We look for answers.