SUMMARY
The story is about a waitress who is working on her twentieth birthday and is asked to deliver food to her boss’s room. Seems ordinary, but when she goes to deliver the food, after an odd little conversation the man comes to know about her 20th birthday and offers to her grant a wish. Absolutely anything that she wants! The only condition being she can’t take back what she said.
After resisting a little, the girl makes her wish. The owner says that it has been granted and then the girl moves on with her evening. Now, the story here takes a leap, and we find the girl talking to someone that is now the narrator of the story.
Now who this narrator exactly is, is not confirmed in the story till the end, nor has Murakami given away what the wish was or whether or not it has actually been granted, he just leaves us guessing!
Getting back to the story, the narrator asks the girl what the wish exactly was, but the girl refuses to answer it, instead she replies, “You’re not supposed to tell anybody what you wished for, you know.”
(For me, this was the first trigger point , but if you were also someone that has ever made a wish by blowing your eyelash that fell, you know what she means!)
Next the narrator questions, was the wish truly granted? To which she replies, “I have a lot of living to do to know that, it was a wish that takes time to be granted” (Well, Trigger point 2.)
The narrator then moves on to ask whether or not she regretted what she wished for, to which she answers in a way that we get no clear idea about whether she is happy or not, she narrates the luxurious life she is living, that is being married to a CPA, having two children, owning an Irish setter, driving an Audi, and playing tennis with her girlfriends twice a week, now all of this sounds pretty good and possibly everything that a 20 year old can wish for , but for some reasons she doesn’t sounds happy, because further in the conversation she adds, “is this all good even if the Audi has a dented bumper?”. And while explaining herself furthermore she adds, “No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That’s all.”
Then the women asks the narrator if he/she was given a chance to wish for what will that be? But the narrator could not come up with anything, to which the women replies, “That’s because you already made your wish!”.
ANALYSIS:
Above was a short summary of the book, Birthday girl by Haruki Murakami, Which undoubtedly raises many questions like, ‘What was the wish?’, ‘Could the old man really grant the wish?’, ‘Who was the narrator?’. So here is my take on the following questions.
Could the old man really grant the wish?
I feel yes the old man was someone who could grant the wish, because I feel the old man was a representation of a genie as he actually didn’t grant her just one wish he granted her 3 wishes. First, when she asks, “Shall I bring your meal in, sir?”. He replies, “Yes of course! if you wish its fine with me.” Second when she asks, “if you would be kind enough to set the dishes in the hall as usual, sir, I’ll come get them in an hour”. He replies, “Oh yes, I’ll put them in the hall. On the trolley. In an hour. If you wish.” And third when he actually asks her to make a wish.
Who was the narrator?
Now this assumption on mine is solely based on the line, “That’s because you already made your wish!” And the narrator saying she is too far away from her 20th birthday.
I feel that the narrator none other than the older version of the woman itself! Because the conversation between the narrator and the woman gave us a vibe that the narrator somehow is connected to the woman, they has a light conversation like friends or the people you have known in the past do, now the woman herself is in her 30s so that makes narrator in her 40s or 50s and she has forgotten all about the wish she made, but she did already make a wish.
What was the wish?
Oh my god. Now this question left unanswered was the most annoying part of the whole book. But from the conclusions I have made (after reading the book twice) is that maybe the wish made by her was something of a perfect life (as she says, “I have a lot of living to do to know that, it was a wish that takes time to be granted”, and a wish for a life could be the only wish that for which she has much living left to do and that takes time to come true) which she thought was perfect in her 20s but now that she is in her 30s, it turns out that it isn’t actually perfect at all.
Hope this interpretation of mine was helpful!