A Great Butler The Unreliable Narrator In Kazuo Ishiguros The Remains Of The Day

Author : Lynn Bay
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3656228485
Total Pages : 20 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book "A great butler": the unreliable narrator in Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day" written by Lynn Bay and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2012-07-02 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Würzburg, language: English, abstract: In Kazuo Ishiguro ́s The Remains of the Day the first person narrator Stevens, a butler on the verge of retirement, undertakes a journey to meet – for what is likely the last time in their lives – his former coworker and love interest Miss Kenton. At the same time, he tries to come to terms with his past by reexamining his memories of his life at Darlington Hall, the choices he made and the values he had. Throughout his account it becomes increasingly obvious that Stevens ́s narration cannot be trusted completely. His comments on, and interpretation of, past events in his life and his portrayal of himself and others in his tale expose him as an unreliable narrator. However, his attempts to deceive himself and others are possibly the most interesting and telltale aspect of the narrative. After all, “the use of an unreliable narrator draws attention to a character ́s psychology.” Paradoxically, the narrator reveals most about himself and his life when he is trying to obscure the truth.

Author : Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307576183
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Remains of the Day written by Kazuo Ishiguro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-07-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, here is “an intricate and dazzling novel” (The New York Times) about the perfect butler and his fading, insular world in post-World War II England. This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of a butler named Stevens. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman," Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness," and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.

Author : Sebastian Göb
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3638055450
Total Pages : 13 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Self-deception and Insight. The Concept of Unreliable Narration in Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day" written by Sebastian Göb and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2015-12-18 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,75, University of Frankfurt (Main), 10 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This text examines the concept of unreliable narration in Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day". Against the background of the novel's plot the questions arises to what extent the reader can trust the first person narrator Stevens, who is recalling events that have taken place almost 30 years ago. Is he always telling nothing but the truth or does he deliberately leave out important facts that might cast a slur at him or other persons in the novel or perhaps might destroy his self-image as a professional butler. Stevens pretends to be an honourable butler but how far can he be regarded to be honest to the reader respectively the narratee whome he addresses explicitly (Ishiguro 2005: 8 “Nevertheless, I think you will understand [...]”)? In this context it is even more important to question his honesty towards himself; does he relentlessly tell the truth or does he betray even himself? In order to answer these evolving questions it is first of all necessary to give a brief outline of the literal terms point of view and unreliable narration in general. Being familiar with these expressions the next step that leads to a better understanding of the protagonist’s character is the analysis of the narrative structure in “The Remains of the Day”. This chapter includes the examination of the novel’s language as well as the point of view and the (un)reliability of the narrator. As far as the question of (un)reliability is answered it is mandatory to consider Stevens’ blindness and to ask if in the end a possible insight can be detected. This chapter has to be subdivided which means it has to be regarded in either an ideological /political context as well as in a private /social context. Finally, in the conclusion the findings will be summarized in order to answer the question: To what extent can self-deception and insight be detected with the (un)reliable narrator Stevens in Kazuo Ishiguros Novel “The Remains of the Day”?

Author : Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0375412654
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book When We Were Orphans written by Kazuo Ishiguro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2001-01-16 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes this stunning work of soaring imagination. Born in early twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition—and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him. Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one’s past.

Author : Marion Schenkelberg
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3638213412
Total Pages : 17 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book National and personal history in Kazuo Ishiguro ́s "The Remains of the Day" written by Marion Schenkelberg and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2003-08-27 with total page 17 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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)

Author : Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307829065
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book An Artist of the Floating World written by Kazuo Ishiguro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-09-05 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II. Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the aftermath of that war, his memories of his youth and of the "floating world"—the nocturnal world of pleasure, entertainment, and drink—offer him both escape and redemption, even as they punish him for betraying his early promise. Indicted by society for its defeat and reviled for his past aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being.

Author : Isabel Blumenroth
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3638539326
Total Pages : 25 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Role of Miss Kenton in the Characterisation of Stevens (in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day) written by Isabel Blumenroth and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2006-08-29 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, RWTH Aachen University (English Department), course: Fictional Histories and (Auto)biographies: Julian Barnes - Kazuo Ishiguro - Graham Swift, language: English, abstract: This retrospection gradually reveals Stevens' peculiar character. Accordingly,The Remains of the Dayis a novel about the central figure's character and the change it undergoes in the course of the years. Characterisation plays a very important role in it. The use of diary-like entries for certain stops on Stevens' journey suggest the explicit characterisation of the figure through the first-person narrator. However, the reader is confronted with an unreliable narration that combines homodiegetic and extradiegetic features in regular intervals. Thus the reader cannot fully rely on the statements of the narrator in order to get a picture of his character. What is much more telling is the butler's way of hiding and overlooking things, his not-telling, which characterises him far better and more objectively than his own notion of himself does. Due to the narrative perspective and Stevens' few relations in life4there are not many subsidiary figures who can serve as an additional source describing the butler's traits of character. Nevertheless, there is one figure in the novel which can give information about the former stateandchange of Stevens' character. This figure is Miss Kenton, who has been the housekeeper at Darlington Hall for many years and who developed a relationship to Stevens that can be called the most emotional he had ever had. It is the purpose of this paper to analyse her role in the characterisation of Stevens. However, I want to stress that this paper is not supposed to be a full and exhausting characterisation of the figure of the butler. It is rather intended to deal with the different aspects the figure of Miss Kenton contributes to the characterisation and change of character Stevens undergoes in the course of the novel. This will be done by focussing the following aspects: 1. Miss Kenton's direct statements about Stevens. 2. The relationship between Stevens and the housekeeper and what it tells about Stevens' emotional life. 3. The interaction between the two figures. This aspect will briefly deal with their dialogues and will be combined with the comparison of Stevens' and Miss Kenton's highly contrary natures and what they mean with regard to the revelation of Stevens' character traits. According to these aspects, my analysis will mostly remain on the story-level only. The discourse level might be touched as far as the narrative situation is concerned, since most of the information about Stevens is conveyed through his own narration.

Author : Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307829073
Total Pages : 185 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Pale View of Hills written by Kazuo Ishiguro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-09-05 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day Here is the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. In a novel where past and present confuse, she relives scenes of Japan's devastation in the wake of World War II.

Author : Adam Parkes
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 0826452310
Total Pages : 94 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day written by Adam Parkes and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2001-09-01 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continuum Contemporaries will be a wonderful source of ideas and inspiration for members of book clubs and readings groups, as well as for literature students.The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to 30 of the most popular, most acclaimed, and most influential novels of recent years. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question. The books in the series will all follow the same structure:a biography of the novelist, including other works, influences, and, in some cases, an interview; a full-length study of the novel, drawing out the most important themes and ideas; a summary of how the novel was received upon publication; a summary of how the novel has performed since publication, including film or TV adaptations, literary prizes, etc.; a wide range of suggestions for further reading, including websites and discussion forums; and a list of questions for reading groups to discuss.

Author : Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 9781934110621
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro written by Kazuo Ishiguro and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2008 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nineteen interviews conducted over the past two decades on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond with the author of the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day