Abstract—This paper discusses the historical, political and personal double narrative inherent in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (1989). The first-person narrator, butler Stevens approaches self-awareness from double angles of time and space. Although Stevens and his country, the British Empire had lost its glory of the past and the nostalgia of its magnificent days, they still try to look positively into the present. Drawing on historicity and mythology, aristocratism and democracy, Stevens’ nostalgia and self-awareness, Ishiguro implies that we are all butlers. This paper does not find greatness within past nostalgia but explores the way to dignity through historical, political, and personal self-awareness in the fast changing world of today.
Index Terms—Double narrative, dignity, greatness, self-awareness.
Minjeon Go is with the Department of English Literature of Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, CO 80305 South Korea (e-mail: kmj2025@ naver.com).
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Cite:Minjeon Go, "Historical, Political and Personal Double Narrative: Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 242-246, 2018.