A Study Of The Theme Of Trauma In Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans

Kazuo Ishiguro is a celebrated Japanese-British writer of his generation. In the contemporary British literary world, Ishiguro is often aligned with British diasporic writers such as the Trinidadian V. Shiva Naipaul, the Anglo-Indian Salman Rushdie. Many critics consider that he always uses an implicit and subtle writing style in his novels to present senses of rootlessness, loss and displacement of the immigrants. And they also consider that his works pay attention to history, cultural conflicts and cultural hybrids. Without exception, his fifth novel, When We Were Orphans(2000) also inherits his common theme and writing style.In When We Were Orphans, the first-person narrator Christopher Banks uses a retrospective way to narrate his mental journey to seek for his lost parents, the lost homeland, and the historic truth. On this journey, Banks suffers from familial trauma, cultural trauma and war trauma. Based on the text of When We Were Orphans and the theory of trauma, this thesis aims at giving a comprehensive and detailed analysis on the causes of trauma, the symptoms of trauma and the traumatized subject’s recovery from trauma. The whole thesis is made up of three parts: introduction, body and conclusion. The introduction part gives a brief overview to the author Kazuo Ishiguro and the researches on this novel in China and abroad. Then it gives a brief introduction to the trauma theory. It points out the research values on the theme of trauma in this novel. The main body consists of three parts. Chapter one gives a detailed analysis on the causes of the protagonist Banks’ trauma: the traumatized subject in this novel suffer from familial trauma caused by the parents’ sudden disappearance; the cultural trauma caused by the identity confusion under the bicultural background; and the war trauma caused by the world wars’ atrocities. These traumatic events torture the traumatized subject and make him fail to face his life normally. Chapter two mainly probes into the symptoms of trauma. After experiencing the ordeals of familial trauma, cultural trauma and war trauma, the protagonist Banks has the traumatic symptoms of mental chaos and negative escapism. In the progress of narrating the traumatic experiences, these traumatic symptoms are presented in Banks’ nonlinear narration and unreliable narration. When narrating his traumatic experiences, Banks abandons his linear time sequence. His past and present are interwoven in his fragmented and overlapping memories, which reflect Banks’ mental chaos after his experiencing of painful traumatic events. Meanwhile, Banks’ narration is sometimes vague and evasive. He intentionally avoids the situations related with these traumatic experiences and even selectively forgets the painful traumatic experiences. This kind of unreliable narration presents Banks’ psychological negative escapism after experiencing these ordeals. Chapter three discusses the traumatized subject’s recovery from trauma. After revisiting the traumatic experiences, the traumatized subject can finally accept his orphan identity, reconcile with his rootless state and reconcile with his sense of historical mission.The conclusion part summarizes the theme of trauma in Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans and the presentation of the unspeakable traumatic experiences by unique narrative strategies. The theme of trauma in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel is related to the convention and context of postcolonial writing, which reflects the contemporary immigrants’ general sense of homelessness under the bicultural identity and their helplessness in the complicated historical process.