A Study Of Identity Loss In The Remains Of The Da

As the most famous work of Kazuo Ishiguro,winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature,The Remains of the Day has attracted widespread attention from scholars at home and abroad.Kazuo Ishiguro,who has a dual cultural background of Britain and Japan,projects his identity thinking into this work.Therefore,scholars have conducted various studies on the process of Stevens’ identity establishment and reconstruction in the novel,but no one has put forward the idea of Stevens’ losing identity.Based on the identity theory,this thesis studies the condition of Stevens’ identity and points out Stevens’ dilemma of losing identity,finding that the dramatic changes in the social environment after the Second World War causes the loss of Stevens’ national identity,which threatens the existence of his social identity and makes Stevens recognizing the disappearance of his long-neglected family identity due to his clinging to the butler identity.Using Stevens’ identity as a bridge,Kazuo Ishiguro explores the close relationship between society and self from the national,social and family levels.From the national level,he emphasizes the serious consequences of being a survivor of the times,which will cause the separation of society and self,by representing the importance of the identification of British culture and British political identity to Stevens’ finding national identity.At the social level,he stresses that the isolation of self and society will create marginalized people by representing the importance of the identification of butler identity and butler group to looking for social identity.On the family level,he insists that the establishment of interpersonal relationship is conducive to strengthening the close connection between self and society by representing the importance of harmonious family relationship to searching family identity.Furthermore,the theme of identity loss is the focus of Kazuo Ishiguro’s composing “humanity commonality” which conveys the concept of international writing.