The Journey Of Banks' Quest For Identity In When We Were Orphans

When We Were Orphans(2000)is the fifth work of Kazuo Ishiguro,who is the winner of 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature as well as one of the most honored and influential writers with a growing international renown.In the world of contemporary British literature,Ishiguro is often aligned with such British immigrant writers as V.Shiva Naipaul and Salman Rushdie.Most of Ishiguro's works focus on the issues of people's existential dilemma and identity pursuit in the more and more globalized world.In the novel When We Were Orphans,the protagonist Christopher Banks narrates his mental journey to seek for his parents,his lost homeland and self-identity.This novel has been researched from various perspectives,including trauma and recovery,orphanhood and its cultural significance,comparative study with other literary works,writing strategies,and international themes and so on.All of these theses have enlightened my inspiration for this thesis.However,these previous studies tend to ignore the implied connotations of pursuing individual and cultural identities in the contemporary multicultural society,which,this thesis argues,is intentionally implied in Ishiguro's perfect presentation of international writing.With the method of close reading,this thesis aims at investigating the protagonist Banks' identity crisis from two aspects—family misfortune and alienation caused by bicultural identity.It argues that the protagonist Christopher Banks,who is born in Shanghai but has Anglo-Saxon ancestry,is bereft of parents at very early age and fails to blend into both Britain and Chinese society,which makes him have a strong sense of homelessness and rootlessness,and the double displacement makes it necessary for him to embark on the journey to pursue a stable identity.Moreover,self-deceptive,alienated from the society,Banks is immersed in his imaginary world to escape from his vulnerable personality and harsh reality.Based on Homi Bhabha's third space theory,this thesis reaches the conclusion that after unfolding the disastrous reality,Banks ultimately flees from the imaginary homeland and gets rid of the unrealistic mission,and reconstructs a new hybridized identity.This thesis attempts to explore Banks' journey to seek for his parents as well as reconstruct his own identity,and further deal with the implied cultural connotations behind the identity-quest process,so as to disclose Kazuo Ishiguro's deep concern about contemporary human predicament and his universal caring spirits upon the rootless group.This thesis is expected to enrich,to some extent,the interpretation of Ishiguro's works and shed light on decoding contemporary literature.