https://www.youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227213/on-seeing-the-100-perfect-girl-one-be autiful Questions to consider: - What is the writer trying to communicate with the speaker’s imagination vs actual passiveness - How does the writer portray how enraptured the man is by the girl in the first few paragraphs? - Why does the writer portray the woman so different in appearance vs the way the man idolizes her? - What might the writer be trying to convey about the concept of love through this story? - - - - Fate - “If we really are each other’s 100% perfect lovers, then sometime, somewhere, we will meet again without fail. And then what that happens, and we know that we are the 100% perfect ones, we’ll marry then and there. - “Explain to her the complexites of fate that have led to our passing each other on a side street in Harajuku on a beautiful April morning in 1981” Taking the first opportunity and not overthinking things. - The protagonist talks about what he should have said to the girl for the whole story when in the actual situation he didn’t even say anything - “How can I approach her? What should I say” - “Ridiculous. I’d sound like an insurance salesmen” - By the time he comes up with the right thing to say to her, she’s already gone and he’ll probably never see her again. Standing out by being normal - “Much as I like noses, I can’t recall the shape of hers” - “All I can remember for sure is that she was no great beauty. It’s weird” - “Good Looking?, not really, your favorite type then? I don’t know.” The character is quite unique - “Sometimes in a restaurant I’ll catch myself staring at the girl at the table next to mine because I like the shape of her nose.” - He’s quite lonely - He comes up with a whole backstory of their meeting Symbolism of 50 yards away, “I tell someone.”, “I can’t seem to remember anything about her the shape of her eyes or the size of her breasts.”, - - Because he sees her from so far away and her features are so unknown to him, she could be in some ways anyone, what this does is make this experience more general, the want for connection she evokes to him could be by any person. What she represents is the hope of escaping loneliness. I can’t seem to remember anything about her - - Juxtaposition: Contrasts the impact she had (100% perfect girl) with his inability to remember her features. How can you meet your 100% perfect girl but not remember anything about them. “The shape of her eyes or the size of her breasts” - Repetition of his lack of memory of the girl which strengthens the point of how the girl could be anyone. - Contrasting the 2 things that a man may notice first about a woman and him not remembering her features. Goes back to the point of how “fate” may be the thing thats attracting him to her Through the man’s description of the woman and his encounter with her, there is symbolism in the vagueness employed in it, demonstrating the paradox of love. Firstly, he notices her from “50 yards away”, which is a far distance virtually impossible for viewing any person, even less the love of one’s life. He then shares his encounter with “someone” which implies a lack of significance and memorability of the after events as well. Following this, he confesses that he “can’t seem to remember anything [...] the shape of her eyes or the size of her breasts”, which contrasts the impact that the girl had on the protagonist. This creates the idea that it is not the girl herself whom he is attracted to, but more likely the idea of a partner that would help the speaker escape his sense of loneliness. Overall, the symbolism of this girl and the distance helps to amplify the way that love is illusive in the sense that it can mislead humans and that we cannot fully comprehend love and its nature within ourselves. -----How does the writer portray how enraptured the man is by the girl in the first few paragraphs? - He proclaims that this girl is the “100% girl for him”, this indicates the powerful impression that she had on him Depsite the short encounter on a busy street, she remains attached to his memory to the point where he thinks about what he should have said to her “The moment I see her, there’s a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert.” “Wish I could talk to her” The mentioning of how he noticed her even from 50 yards away. “Her clothes are nothing special.” and “The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep” - Very specific ----------The dancing dwarf - Temptation - - Shown through the dwarf's actions toward the protagonist and how the protagonist proceeds to let the dwarf into his body to try win over a girl. Control over one’s body and actions - Throughout the story, the protagonist slowly loses control over his mind and actions because of his deal with the dwarf. - “The dwarf comes into my dreams every night and orders me to let him inside me” Why specific a dwarf? What is this symbolising? - Dwarfs are associated with magic and supernatural powers What might the mess about the dwarf in his lack of organisation (records and their jackets) portray about his personality and what he represents? How can we see chaos? - It shows the order that is absent from the Dwarfs life - It also shows the life that the protagonist may sobconsiously want as he works in a very mundane workplace. - I feel like it also foreshadows a level of chaos that is going to encroach itself into the protagonist's life What’s interesting about the speaker’s awareness that this is a dream? - Lucid dreaming, he can control things within his dreams, we cannot fully trust the description of what is going on. - Also dreams are when you are fantisising, and really when your inner desires come out in the form of made up stories. With this dream being so interactive, there is a huge element of fantasy that makes this story so interesting. Why is there such a parallel between the reality of the speaker’s life working in the factory vs the dream? What is this trying to portray and why is it so powerful? You can also add on about his partner at work - His dream is his sort of escapism from the mundane life he works and lives in. “Each building is big too, and the sections are color-coded”. “All I did was make ears”. There’s something quite mundane and defeated about the way he describes all their processes and the way they are monitored by the factory. - His partner went told about the “dancing dwarf” in his dreams comes up with a very mundane response however the narrator says “this came as no great disappoint to me” as if he is just speaking to himself and doesn’t need a response. -> his partner is also an extension of the mundanity and lack of excitement in his life. - The quote “though in the pre-christmas season we can increase that to as many as twenty-five” He talks about these elephants as if they are a gift or a commodity. - “And because we love elephants, of course” this shows how humans try to control nature and the world. What can we sense about the reader’s sense of purpose in life - esp. When he talks about his job? - He feels very proud of it, he talks about how rewarding making an elephant head is and even when he loses 6 pounds he feels a great sense of accomplishment. However when making something simple like an ear is a breeze and is a break. This fixation on his work and the production line suggests that there is little else that brings a sense of purpose to him and makes him genuinely happy. How does creating suspense around the dancing dwarf’s actual existence help to engage readers? How can we see this suspense? - The dwarf at the beginning is seen in a dream, for all we know at this point this dwarf is just an imagination in the narrator's mind, later when the narrator tells his partner, the partner who doesn’t normally say much surprisingly mentioned that he’s pretty sure he once heard about the dwarf and that the old man which symbolizes wisdom and knowledge knows more about the dwarf. He then goes to the tavern and asks the old man where he tells the narrator to “not tell anybody” and that “you’re not supposed to talk about the dancing dwarf”. This suspense that is created through the dreamstate where the dancing dwarf first appears then later the old man makes the reader question the reality of this dwarf and if it’s just an imagination then if the dwarf caused the revolution. - The creation of suspense surrounding the existence of the dwarf engages the reader by prompting them to question the reality of the character and its effect on the overall story. The first meeting introduces a sense of ambiguity and leaves room for interpretation. The reader is uncertain wheter the dwarf is a figment of the narrators imagination or if it is has a genuine impact within the story. What is symbolic about the reaction that the audience had to the dwarf’s dance? What does this represent or allude to? - “People watched him, breathless. No one could speak. Several of the noble ladies fainted to the floor, and from the king's own hand fell a crystal goblet containing gold-dust wine, but not a single person noticed the sound of it shattering.” What might the intense lying to see the girl be symbolic of? How is this a change in character of the main protagonist? - He first ends up lying to a guard about his true intentions of going into a different factory, up to this point in the story he is portrayed as someone that is quite passive and not too assertive however when he finds about this girl he changes and becomes sort of toxic and rather pushy. - The way to break down this question would be - 1. Bring in several quotes showing his passivity or his doubts about any real excitement in life - 2. Bring in the lying and his forward approach to the girl - 3. Parallel the difference between the two What’s interesting about the protagonist’s new desire to dance vs his reluctance even when he was in the dream at the beginning of his encounter with the dwarf? - When the narrator finds something that he wants he will do anything to get it, he who at the start of the story didn’t want to dance finds that the girl is interested in dancing and ends up taking an offer from a dwarf that he has heard bad things about, that allowed the dwarf to take control over his body - His captivation with the dwarf’s dance and the temptation he feels towards attaining his aspirations comes to life. - He could also be feeling some regret from not dancing with the dwarf in the first place, which further widens the gap between their abilities to dance. Why do you think the dwarf has such a drop of energy when he is not dancing? What might this symbolise? - I think when he meets the dwarf for the first time it is the dwarf before the revolution where is dancing for the king, this is also proven by the fact that the narrator is eating grapes and just watching, I linked this to julius caesar and how he got fed grapes when he was the ruler Rome. However the second time he meets the dwarf is after the revolution when he gets kicked out to the forest, for him dancing is his escapism, the thing that makes him who he is and even though he is different from others because he was able to dance he was special and people viewed him as somewhat of a celebrity. Disallowing the protagonist from using his voice - what is the symbolism of this? (individuality vs aspiration) - In the agreement the narrator is not allowed to use his voice until after the girl has been “won”, this agreement to me represents that language is not needed, and to truly communicate what you are feeling, you must not rely solely on language but on other aspects of communication such as dance in this case.
