이시구로의 『남은 날들』: 해체를 통한 깨달음

Abstract

Unlike his earlier two novels which have Japan as their backgrounds, Kazuo Ishiguro adopts the genre of ‘the novel of manners,’ which is considered probably the most representative English form of novel, for his third work, The Remains of the Day. Traditionally, a novel of manners uses ‘a reliable narrator’ to establish the authority of the narrative in order to deliver the new values and socio-political ideas to the readers. However, Ishiguro describes his narrator, Stevens the butler of Darlington Hall, as ‘an unreliable narrator’ and achieves the aim of letting the readers think that the values and socio-political ideas delivered by the narrator are dubious and on “the mystical foundation of authority.” As a result, the readers of his novel would keep themselves from empathizing with the narrator’s story and attempt to find the errors and lies in his narrative. In this way Ishiguro deconstructs the most representative genre of English novel and encourages the readers to question the values and socio-political ideas addressed in the novel of manners. The values and socio-political ideas the novel deconstructs can be summed up as “the notion of benevolent paternalism” as Susie O’Brien puts. In the novel, Lord Darlington acts as the benevolent and authoritative father whom Stevens obeys and entrusts all of his own rights of decision to. With this hierarchical system the world of Darlington Hall, representing the past England and even the contemporary England, is believed to keep the stability and to attribute to “the progress of humanity” by Stevens. In order to justify his belief, Stevens argues that he served his employer of greatness with dignity. To identify himself as a man of dignity Stevens addresses how he wholeheartedly inhabit his profession, but through his narrative the fact that he was ignorant of the importance of those he inhibited is revealed. Also, the foundation of the system, Lord Darlington’s authority, is challenged and turned out to be on “the mystical foundation.” In this way, Ishiguro dramatizes the process of the deconstruction of “a particular myth about a certain kind of mythical England” in The Remains of the Day.