HP56’s Kids Are All Right is very unique work. It doesn’t have a main theme or a clear causal relationship between the episodes. The episodes are more like an omnibus and description of the inner sides of characters are extremely refrained. It only lists the current situation and condition, and the daily routine Dai is on. In other words, it did not intend internal completion in the work. So, how does the work stand as a work? It only stands through the assumption that regarding the readers as observers, the observation of such situations itself would cause some feeling to the readers. The readers take a role to give a meaning to the depicted situation, and only then the work stands as a work.

 

So, what feeling would the readers get from this work? I’m going to explain the interaction between the work and the readers with the feeling of responsibility. 

 

Kids Are All Right depicts Dai’s experiences during a short period, from his entrance to an elementary school to his mother’s death, in the third person. The duration in the work is about 6 months – from the entrance in March to some time after the end of vacation in September or October. The work depicts events during the 6 months, and it refrains from describing characters’ inner sides, enough to be a bit dry. Each episode are mostly daily life Dai experiences, and the content is not very dramatic. Its contents make use of ordinary things as materials, such as meeting friends in school, things happened during a sports day or a field trip, going somewhere to play with friends, paying visit to his mother and talking with her, and getting asleep waiting his father. This ordinariness is a device to make the readers focus on the condition Dai is on, not on the story of Dai itself.

 

Actually, the condition Dai is on is not ordinary. Seemingly the marriage of Dai’s parents is not based on love, and they fought often when they were living together. Later, Dai’s mother had to leave home for her illness, and Dai’s father doesn’t have a stable job. 

 

 

 

But Dai lives on his ordinary life in such an unordinary condition. Such dissonance is the very core of this work, and the readers come to have a specific feeling from their recognition of the dissonance. Then, what is the specific feeling? I believe the feeling is the responsibility as a member of this society.

 

Maybe it would be a little strange if I mention the feeling of responsibility instead of feelings of shame or sorriness. However, while the feelings of shame or sorriness are a momentary feeling, the responsibility is a fundamental and ethic attitude, enabling the momentary feelings. Responsibility is not limited to the consequence of our actions. Such kind of responsibility is more like affirmation of causal relation. Asking a question if I have responsibility on an event happening in front of me is namely a contemplation on myself as a being-the-world. In other words, it’s a contemplation on if I did the best in the relation, if I really tried all the options I could do, and if I can’t do any more on it or if I’m not doing any more though I still have another choice.

 

Moreover, we all suffers some degree of pain while we live. Such suffering is in part because of the condition I’m on, and in part a result of my own actions. And we all have felt shame, anger, or resentment on the condition we were on. When the readers see the situation and the condition Dai’s on, they naturally identify Dai with themselves, and further, they feel shame on that the condition Dai is on is not getting any better. Such feelings lead us to an ethical contemplation of ‘what action shall I do?’, and the fundamental attitude enabling such ethical contemplation is the responsibility, in other words, the responsibility as a self-contemplating attitude on which action I should do as a being-in-the-world.

 

In the consideration of that, the fact that adults in the work are depicted in a typical way might mean it’s asking the readers to self-contemplate. For an instance, the actions of Dai’s aunt are not because she’s evil person. Frivolous words of uncle, indifference of father, or the attitude of Sia’s mother isn’t because they’re evil people, either. They are doing their best inside their own limitations, namely, their own circumstances. 

 

 

However, the readers who are reading such situation in the third person with an objectified viewpoint believe they can do better than them, or they should do so, and such judgement can’t take place without asking the question of ‘which is the right action?’ or ‘which is the better action?’

 

The power of Kids Are All Right is at this point. This work does not intend catharsis from completeness of the play or amusement of reading from completeness as an art. It is unique because it induces the readers to ask a question themselves, and this makes this work stand as a work. If readers can ask their own questions and get their answers from interacting with this work, it would be a lot more meaningful to the readers.