History And Responsibility In The Remains Of The Day

Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day is constructed in the form of self narration, narrated retrospectively by the protagonist Stevens about his life as a butler during and after World War Ⅱ. All throughout the novel Stevens has been struggling in the discrepancy between personal memory and public history of war. Confronting that conflict, Stevens endeavors to bridge the gap between them through his narration. With his personal memory as a displacement of his knowledge about the history of war, Stevens tried his best to make compromise between historical facts outside Lord Darlington’s mansion and his responsibility as a butler which rationalizes his indifference to the war. Yet, as is made manifest in the novel’s consistent use of shifting perspective between Steven’s experiencing self and his narrating self, such an effort results in an increase of his psychological conflict between being responsible as a professional butler and the demand from his increasing consciousness as a person who witnessed the events happening in the house. Based on the narrative theory, focusing on the unreliability of Stevens’ narration, this paper will examine how Stevens tries to remove his long-term guilt and responsibility for the past through the act of narration.This paper will be divided into three chapters. The first chapter explicates the discrepancy between Stevens’ personal memory and public history, especially about the past concerning Lord Darlington. Facing that conflict, Stevens strives to reconstruct and to interpret the past in his own memory. The second chapter demonstrates that Stevens makes use of his identity as being the butler with professionalism and dignity in Darlington Hall to interpret the past he experienced. The third chapter investigates that in the disguise of being a professional butler, through his unreliable narration of the past, Stevens finally attains the effect of removing his long-term guilt and sense of responsibility.