Remembrance And Reconciliation

Kazuo Ishiguro(1954-)is a distinguished contemporary Japanese-born British novelist with high international prestige.What touches the innermost part of human soul is his continuous contemplation in his works on common issues concerned by human beings beyond national borders,such as history,memory,class,race,and gender.So far,he has won a number of international literary awards,including the Whitbread Book Awards,the Man Booker prize and Cheltenham Prize,all of which establish his world reputation.Along with his previous plentiful achievements,it should not come as a surprise that Ishiguro was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on 5 October,2017.In his early novels,Ishiguro is adept at deploying memory as his narrative strategy and powerful weapon and focuses on the protagonists' individual memory,dwelling on irretrievable regret and loss in the process of recalling the past.In The Buried Giant(2015),Ishiguro for the first time extends the theme of memory to the social level,that is,to collective memory and forgetting.Set in the mist-shrouded England,two once-antagonistic ethnic groups,Britons and Saxons live in harmony as friends and kins.With a goal to conceal the truth of war memory,King Arthur wields his power to manipulate collective memory,rendering the public oblivious of what had happened in the past.The Mist—which is produced by the she-dragon Querig on whom Wizard Merlin casts a spell at the behest of King Arthur—leads to their collective amnesia.In the state of collective amnesia,a Briton couple Axl and Beatrice sets foot on a journey in pursuit of memory and identity.This thesis conducts the analysis based on the views of Paul Ricoeur,Maurice Halbwachs and Avishai Margalit in the memory theory,looking into how the collectivity and individuals in the novel reconstruct their identities and further excavating how they should correctly face the guilt or fault.This thesis is divided into five parts.The first part gives a brief introduction to Kazuo Ishiguro,his achievements and key terms extracted from memory theory which serve as its theoretical support.Then research results and trend of The Buried Giant both at home and abroad are sorted out to clarify the research significance of this thesis.Chapter One explores the incompleteness of collective and individual identitiesin the forgetting “Mist”,digs into the representations and reasons of their loss of identities and suggests that manipulation of power by the dominator is the root cause of the loss of collective and individual identities.Suffering from collective amnesia,all the individuals are faced with loss of identity.Loss of memory exerts immense influence on the life of each individual and the two ethnic groups.In the process of pursuing and recollecting memory,the Briton couple bears both high expectations and anxiety for the past reality.On the other hand,it is found that King Arthur's abuse of power deprives them of their memories.As an important image with profound symbolic meaning in the novel,the “Mist” has become the result of King Arthur's manipulation of collective memory through his power.Chapter Two focuses on the process of deconstruction and reconstruction of identity through recognition of war memory and individual memory.Although manipulated forgetting robs both the Britons and Saxons of the war memory and restores peace,the elderly she-dragon is no longer the barrier in the inexorable progress of recovery of memory.With the emergence of war memory,Sir Gawain who firmly defends King Arthur's “justice”,and the warrior Wistan who has been longing to retaliate for his fellow Saxons,both end up as victims of power struggle.With the returning of individual memories,the Briton couple comes to realize the breakdown of family ties,while young Edwin,under the guidance of Wistan,succeeds in freeing himself from the shackles of memory and grows into a brave warrior.In doing so,the novel reflects family conflicts and contradictions between nations in the real society,and holds that collective forgetting cannot really solve those issues.Chapter Three delves into the ethics of memory contained in the novel.The recovery of memory often triggers problems concerning forgetting and forgiveness.In the face of unpleasant memories,especially those full of guilts and faults,individuals either take up arms to retaliate on the enemies or temporarily forget and reconcile with the past.It is evident that the boatman who symbolizes death foretells the impossibility of forgiveness.Through detailed analysis,it can be reached that the perpetrators can reconcile with the past by facing up to the past faults or guilts,and at the same time they should avow and bear the responsibility for them so as to obtain forgiveness of the victims.The last part is conclusion.Ishiguro's writing of memory highlights his greatconcern about the relationship between memory and identity.The present is rooted in the past,and people are not able to avoid facing the past.Therefore,loss of memory inevitably exposes the collectivity and individuals to the problem of lack of identity.In the pursuit of memory,Ishiguro successfully reconstructs collective identities by portraying Wistan and Sir Gawain as antagonistic forces,through which the novel refers to nowadays races and states which disavow their past faults,especially to those who have committed great crimes such as genocide and holocaust in the war.Through the confrontation between the two characters,Ishiguro insists that the perpetrator should bear the guilt in order to obtain the victim's forgiveness.Meanwhile individuals ought to confront their faults,understand and forgive each other to face up to the future.A detailed interpretation of the characters' multiple identities in Ishiguro's new work evinces that the couple's journey in quest for their son is in fact a journey in pursuit of individual and collective memory under the forgetting Mist,and also a process of identity reconstruction.Recollections of different events by each individual lead to the door of memory,leading them to break through the barrier of the Mist,to reconcile with the past and firmly move towards the future.Leaving all the characters in oblivion,Ishiguro offers a detailed depiction of every character seeking and fighting along the journey,through which he embeds his new work with a universal and realistic value.