The Analysis Of Identity In An Artist Of The Floating World From Perspective Of Social Identity Theory

Kazuo Ishiguro is a well-renowned British-Japanese writer,and he was awarded Nobel Prize in 2017.He along with his family moved to Britain at the age of five,which exerted an enormous amount of influence on his later writing career.Having two cultural backgrounds did not make him a writer invested in the theme of colonization like the rest of his peers at the time.Instead,he set his aim further and became focused on the emotions that felt among many people across countries,and his works touch many common questions such as the reflection on World War II and its impact on ordinary people,the shaping of individuals under the influence of society,the nature of human beings and the function of a nation as machine,and many more.Scores of researchers attempt to analyze Kazuo Ishiguro’s works from post-colonism,structuralism,existentialism and so on,this thesis would like to analyze it from the perspective of social identity theory.Identity has always played an indispensable role in Kazuo Ishiguro’s books,and An Artist of the Floating World is a book which explores the protagonist’s identity transformation in many aspects.This paper intends to analyze Kazuo Ishiguro’s book An Artist of the Floating World from the perspective of social identity theory.This theory is originally developed by Tajfel to explain the discrimination and the desire to fit in society.The protagonist in An Artist of the Floating World is someone who had difficulty fitting into new society,and was gradually abandoned by the society,and his own identity has gone through tremendous transformations as a result.There are some important elements in this theory,which are categorization,social identification,positive distinctiveness,social comparison.Categorization is the act of dividing people into different categories and behaviors belonging to this kind.Social identification is the practice that individuals tend to identify with a group and its manners,customs,and so on.Positive distinctiveness refers to the fact that people all crave for being identified positively that they would go out of their way to achieve that.Social comparison is the driving force for discrimination and normally,in this way that people would find comfort and joy in a group that he or she stays.The mentioned factors are to analyze the protagonist’s life and his painting career.Apart from that,this thesis delves into the underlying reason for the protagonist’s faulty behavior against the background,which is set in a time of turbulence of chaos.And the government at that time preaches militarism and the spirit of Bushido,they expected to brainwash Japanese people into embracing their expanding war,and made people subconsciously plea allegiance to The Emperor in that age.The people are at the mercy of the control of such ideas,and they became tools for this kind of behavior and unconsciously became part of it.The thesis attempts to demonstrate why it is crucial to explain what Japanese government did and started the war.And The protagonist of the book An Artist of the Floating World,Ono,like the rest of others,did what was asked to do at that time.The background of the society,combined with Ono’s behavior,together explains the underlying reason for his deeds,and further dig the deeper social meaning of the work.This thesis combines social identity theory and social background combined,and lays much emphasis on how the protagonist faces challenges due to the change of society,and is forced to look at his life in retrospect and transforms himself finally.And this paper’s analysis of transformation of identity is divided into three parts due to the ever changing society the protagonist lives in: before,middle,and after war.The protagonist rebelled against culture norms and insisted that he hold on to his own beliefs and refused to go with the waves.He thought that he stuck to his own identity by doing so.However,he succumbed to the society and achieved success and fame by becoming a militarist painter during World War II and acquired a widely recognized and praised identity;After World War II,he was denounced by the society and was forced to to change himself,which led to the transformation of social identity.By digging into the analysis of the identity transformation and an attempt to analyze the book from a linguistic point of view,it is believed that readers could have a deeper understanding of the book and its social value.