National and personal history in Kazuo Ishiguro´s 'The Remains of the Day'

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,5 (A), University of Cologne (Philosophy Faculty), language: English, abstract: Kazuo Ishiguro was born in 1954 in Nagasaki, Japan, and moved to Great Britain in 1960 where he grew up. The Remains of the Day is his third novel after A Pale View of Hills (1982) and An Artist of the Floating World (1986), for which he won the Booker Prize in 1989. The film with Anthony Hopkins also won an award. The Remains of the Day describes the journey of an old-fashioned British butler named Stevens, who undertakes a motoring trip through Britain in 1956 intending to visit Miss Kenton. He received a letter from her and because of staffing problems at Darlington Hall, where he is still employed, he hopes to gain her back as the housekeeper. During his trip, Stevens not only remembers the time he and Miss Kenton worked together, but also the historical events that took place in Darlington Hall between the wars, when Lord Darlington, its former owner, organized several meetings of intellectuals from different nations to discuss the political situation in Europe. While Stevens tells his memories, it becomes clear that he completely gave himself up for his intention to be a great butler and to serve the right man, Lord Darlington. But he presents Lord Darlington as an honourable man that he has not always been, and at last Stevens leads an unhappy and unfulfilled life and does not know what to make out of it because he never allowed himself to live his own life. Stevens is one of Ishiguro's characters that tragically shows how people who have tried to do something good and useful in their lives can suddenly find that they have misplaced their efforts. Not only have they perhaps wasted their talent and their energy, but also they may have contributed, unknowingly, to something that was evil, all the time thinking they were doing something good. (Bigsby 1990: 26)