On The Sense Of Nostalgia In Kazuo Ishiguro's Novels

The nostalgists in Kazuo Ishiguro's novels all try to build nostalgic utopias through memories.In the perspective of the object of the consciousness of nostalgia,it can be divided into the dimensions of time and of space.In addition to the sentimental attachment to the homeland,the nostalgists also try to recapture their childhood with time elapsing irretrievably and seize the images of the obsolete tradition and glory.In terms of the subject of nostalgia,it can be classified into personal nostalgia and social nostalgia.In brief,It seems that people devote themselves into their splendid imaginations unconsciously.The narrators of Ishiguro's novels always shift between nowadays and past,which is the main source of the novels' nostalgic sentiments.However,as a consequence of the nostalgic emotions of ambivalence in the novels,their narrative inevitably falls into a state of inconsistency and even self-denial.That is to say,the underlying reason for the unreliability of the nostalgists is their struggling for self-identity in the process of narrating.Ishiguro's writing focused on immigrants at first,and gradually paid attention to the aged and even humans cloning,as far as to show two extremes of the nostalgia in his novels.With broader and broader visions of his nostalgic writing,Ishiguro shows the duality of identity construction through nostalgia.As a rootless writer,Ishiguro,like his fictional characters,has a sense of confusion about self-identity,and tries to reposition himself through nostalgia.The duality of Ishiguro has relieved him of choosing to be either Japanese or Englishness,as a result of which,his novels aquires a sense of nostalgia and explores the dilemmas of identity in an international style.The sense of alienation,while endowing his novels with a sense of nostalgia,also allows him to draw away from it and to review and reflect on this nostalgia with an internationalist vision.