Uncanniness And Disillusionment:The Theme Construction Of Musicality In Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes: Five Stories Of Music And Nightfall

Kazuo Ishiguro is considered one of the most distinguished contemporary novel writers in the English-speaking world.Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall is the most concentrated embodiment of the musicality created by Kazuo Ishiguro,which is mainly reflected in the following two aspects: Firstly,with music as the medium,subject matter and theme,Ishiguro shows and reveals the living state and essence of modern people.He takes music as a clue,connects unrelated people and things,and serves the same theme with five stories.Secondly,he imitates the structure from music art.From the macroscopic point of view,the whole novel is composed of five stories linked together by the same theme.The five stories are different in length and rhythm,and the alternation of the speed is like a symphony.This thesis mainly adopts interdisciplinary research method,starting from the similarity of literature and music,through interpretation of the works that best reflect the musical characteristics of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels,especially the intensive reading of Nocturnes to analyze the musical elements,so as to explore the deep relationship between music and literature and some kind of shaping of the form and concept of the novel.The thesis starts with the analysis of the musical elements in Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall from the two aspects of the theme and structure of the text.Ishiguro uses the recurring imagery of music to express the illusion of human desire and fear in the face of historical turning and trauma.The musical structure in Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall,the repeated mentioning and dominant musical elements all reflect the intertwined and complementary nature of the novel’s musicality and literary character,embodying the musicalization characteristics of Ishiguro’s novels.Chapter three is about music and uncanniness.In terms of psychological expression,this work uses music to remind the good memories of the past and broken reality,and reproduce the indescribable sense of homelessness when the suppressed emotion of modern people is awakened by music.In terms of cultural analysis,this work takes the experience of musicians as the typical theme,revealing that the root of modern people’s uncanny feeling lies in the pursuit of cultural values of fame and fortune.In the reconstruction of ideal spirit,this work emphasizes the importance of music with both means and purpose,and the importance of professional and spiritual coexistence of music,which provides a way to get out of the negative living state of modern people and return to the essence of pleasure of life.Chapter four is mainly about the ideal disillusionment which is described by three images: musician,musical instrument and music.To a certain extent,these five short stories reveal the author’s thinking on the relationship between reality and ideal.Most of the musicians in the novel face the dilemma between insisting on themselves and following the mainstream of society.As a person who makes a living with music,losing the recognition of his own music is,to some extent,a symbol of losing himself.Music has become a symbol of the embarrassment of the musicians,and an ironic pattern shows the huge gap between the reality of life and the ideals that modern people face.The conclusion part summarizes the purpose and significance of the research.The relationship between literature and music lies in the fact that literature has a kind of “musicality” by drawing on the artistic techniques of music.Ishiguro not only subtly expresses the painful memory and complex psychology caused by collective traumatic events,but also cleverly transplants the structure of music into literary works,which makes his different works have the special relationship of echo and complement between each other.The use of music elements not only makes Ishiguro’s novels have a refreshing breakthrough in form and artistry,but also greatly expands the connotation of the theme,structure and symbolism of the novel,and endows the musicalization of the novel with a unique literary and cultural meaning.The musical writing in Ishiguro’s novels enables us to understand the pressure of survival,the conflict of culture,the loss of value and the predicament of mind in his works from a new perspective.