Homelessness:a Study Of A Pale View Of Hills From The Perspective Of Spatial Criticism

Kazuo Ishiguro is a celebrated Japanese-English writer who was awarded Nobel Prize of Literature in 2017.As a successful and influential debut of Kazuo Ishiguro,the publication of A Pale View of Hills shocked the world literati.It has won numerous awards and great attention and love from the reading public.Gradually,“Homelessness” becomes one of the main themes of Kazuo Ishiguro's works.To date,there are a considerable number of studies about this novel such as narration skills,traumatic memory,characters analysis and so on.In many studies,the research about this novel from the perspective of spatial criticism is relatively fewer but it is valuable.By Lefebvre's space theory,this thesis intends to analyze the situations of main characters in physical space,psychological space and social space.In this novel,the physical space includes post-war Nagasaki and quiet Britain.The mother and daughter are rootless and lonely in both physical spaces.In psychological space,the mother is deeply traumatized by the war and wants to find a new life,but the responsibility of motherhood makes her hesitant and contradictory.In addition,the daughter is depressed by the trauma of the war and the insecure family,who eventually chooses to suicide.And social space is full of different kinds of conflicts.Through the narration of an old Japanese woman named Etsuko who immigrates to England after the World War ?,this novel shows the various states of Japan after the war.The analysis of the three spaces demonstrates that every space is conflicted,turbulent and unstable and people are homeless.All of these further reflect the deep concern of Kazuo Ishiguro for the war-torn individuals as an international writer.