On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl

One Beautiful April Morning

Haruki Murakami

The Internal Story- Form• Murakami adopts a fairytale style into the

recalling of the male protagonists imaginary pick up attempt, this shows his ideals of romance are fantasy and unattainable in reality.

• The structure of the internal story about the lovers creates juxtaposition with the cold reality of the rest of the story which he wishes to detach himself from, this separation of fantasy and reality shows his loneliness.

The Internal Story- Structure

• In the story of the 100% girl, the internal fairy tale is surrounded by reality. The story picks on themes of love and loneliness and the male protagonist is desperate to be in love. The isolation of this story within a story reflects how the main character submerges himself in fantasy to escape the recognised impracticalities of reality.

• The use of first person in the entirety of the story with the exception of the fairytale (which is in third person) creates the contrast of fantasy and reality in the reader’s mind.

The Internal Story-ThemesLoneliness- the writer’s repetitive references to loneliness highlight it as a key theme to the story, he uses the word ‘lonely’ to describe both the boy and the girl when writing ‘they were just an ordinary lonely boy and an ordinary lonely girl’ it shows he wants somebody to identify with these feelings, maybe something he hasn’t experienced and therefore wishes to conjure up in his mind.

Fantastical/Unrealistic relationships- many aspects of the internal story are highly unlikely in reality and are the kind you’d find in folk lore, the test of love especially and agreement that if they are 100% perfect for each other ‘We’ll marry then and there’ –this kind of idea of true love being unstoppable and believing that there’s fate and destiny to hold them together shows how his Romantic ideals are ones more suited for literature than reality.

Unrequited Love-In the internal story we see the writer over compensate for his life, upon meeting the girl and talking to her she tells him he is ‘the 100% perfect boy for me’- with this being his fantasy it may show he’s used to rejection.

What does the fairytale tell us about the main male protagonist?

• Frome the fairy tale we learn the voice of the story is a romantic , he says ‘…their heads were as empty as the young D. H. Lawrence’s piggy bank.’ D. H. Lawrence was a western artist who fledged from a humble upbringing into the riches that accompanied his romantic poetry, writing and art, his reference to him may show his obsession with romantic texts and musings, in love with the idea of being in love.