Unreliable Narrative In Kazuo Ishiguro's Novels

Kazuo Ishiguro is used to adopting the first-person narrator in his novels.In most cases,the narrator "I" tends to be "self-deceptive" and leads the narrative to be unreliable.This unreliable narrative is a way to carry out psychological defense and trauma repair,and it is an implicit expression of the individual's trauma and human destiny viewed by the implied author.Kazuo Ishiguro is also accustomed to using "memory" to frame his novels,incorporating the emotional experience,mental schema,judgment and perception of the characters into the reminiscence narrative,disrupting and reassembling the original clear time and space boundaries and the original appearance of the story.He creates obstacles for the readers' reception and makes the original reliable narrative unreliable."Memory,time and self-delusion" is the style of his novels and a typical feature of unreliable narrative.Using unreliable narrative theory,we can explain why the narrators in Kazuo Ishiguro's novels become unreliable narrators,perceive how the specific narrative style represented by recollection makes the text unreliable,and understand how Kazuo Ishiguro expresses his exploration of trauma,comfort of destiny and concern for human beings by means of unreliable narrative.The "Introduction" puts forward the core issues,research objectives and research significance of this paper.It also illustrates the literature review of Kazuo Ishiguro at home and abroad and summarizes the defects in present study.What's more,it clarifies the research ideas,characteristics,methods and innovations and briefly defines related terms.The first chapter focuses on the narrator's performance.In Kazuo Ishiguro's novels,most of the narrators are the first-person narrators.To some extent,"I" tends to be deceived,concealed and disguised.Therefore,"I" confuses textual factual reports,deviates from the norms of the implied author,and produces unreliable narratives."I"conform to Booth's idea of "Unreliable Narrative".Even the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro himself admitted that his narrators are unreliable.In his seven novels,five of them adopt the first-person narrator,showing various degrees of "unreliability".Specifically,they are represented in four forms:"misplacement","disguise","proxy" and "subject digestion".In fact,the unreliable narrators reflect the implied author's deep and serious thinking.The second chapter focuses on the specific narrative style of the implied author.The analysis of the narrator is based on the visual representation and focuses on the story layer.The analysis of the narrative style is based on the means by which the narrator unfolds the unreliable narrative and focuses on the narrative layer.The narrative method contains a wide range of concepts.To avoid ambiguity,the following can be defined:First,the narrative method is the narrative skill that the narrator must rely on in the narrative behavior.Second,the narrative mode plays the role of the serial story and the skeleton supporting the text.Third,the narrative style highlights the unique writer style of Kazuo Ishiguro.In Kazuo Ishiguro's novels,the specific narrative is the tool for the narrator to unravel the unreliable narrative,and is an indispensable means for the author's layout.Recollection is an indispensable narrative of Kazuo Ishiguro's novels.Recollections will disrupt the logical sequence of time and space,and lead the narrative to unreliable.The specific expressions are "information filtering","object grafting" and"time-space transfer".In addition to the "memory narrative",there are also "polyphonic narratives" and "existential narratives" in the narrative style.Polyphony lies in the pluralism,opposition and communication of sound,which is embodied in the rhetorical exchange of narrative perspectives in The Buried Giant and the contraposition of political ideology;the existential narrative lies in the absurdity of narrative style,but behind absurdity is the search for survival and wound healing,manifesting in the mask of absurdity in The Unconsoled:" Time vines","space stitching" and "carnivalization",behind the absurdity,also express the implied author's thinking about self-breakthrough and trauma repair.The third chapter focuses on the expansion of text to theory.The existence of unreliable narrators and narrative styles enriches the presentation of novels in the style of art and the expression of implicit themes.Similarly,novels provide textual references.The first and second chapters briefly analyze the narrator's performance form and specific narrative style to expand the unreliable narrative theory.This chapter explores how Kazuo Ishiguro's novels have expanded the unreliable theory system base on other elements in the theoretical system.First of all,irony is the function of unreliable narrative.When the unreliable narrator becomes the object of irony,the reader produces an aesthetic reference.At the same time,when irony points to the narrator,it will be found that the narrator's unreliability comes from the traumatic experience,and the irony points to the individuals in the family and the times,out of the aesthetic reference,producing the ethical observations at the family level and the historical perspectives at the time level.Secondly,Kazuo Ishiguro's novels show a bonding change in the narrative distance,that is,the distance between the author's reader and the narrator.Moreover,the traditional unreliable narrative is stable both in the perspective and the person.The narrators of Kazuo Ishiguro not only have both a stable first-person narrative and focus perspective,but also third-person narrative and unstable focus perspective,producing unreliable narrative and enriching our understanding of the theory.The "Conclusion" summarizes the relationship between the unreliable narrative and Kazuo Ishiguro.First,it is the narrative choice and the style of the writer;Second,it is the way to observe the world and comfort the life;Third,it is the expression of geographical genes and cultural choices.Finally,it can be concluded that the unreliable narrative is the style and label of Kazuo Ishiguro.Without exploring the unreliability,it is impossible to understand the deep meaning of the text and the unique narrative characteristics of the author.Simultaneously,it is impossible to understand what kind of abyss the author has set.At the same time,unreliable narrative is also a tool for author to convey his voices.How to listen to the author's voice and perceive the humanistic care of Kazuo Ishiguro as an internationalist writer is the comfort and warmth that readers draw from his novels.The real value lies.