Denial, Memory and History in Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World, and The Remains of the Day

Abstract

Kazuo Ishiguro is a remarkable writer especially of novels that combine memory and history. His novels, A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World and The Remains of the Day are all narratives that heavily rely on memory and reflect on history. The paper is divided into four sections in which the first chapter includes the introduction. The second, third and fourth chapters present the actual analysis of Ishiguro’s novels whereby the three narratives are contrasted thematically. The three themes represented in each chapter are ‘The Shift of Narration among the Three Narratives’, ‘Memory Construction in the Novels’, and ‘The Interrelationship between Personal Events and History’. An analysis of the three novels reveals the unreliable narrations provided by the narrators who shift their narratives between the past and the present not only to reflect but also to deny and hide guilt. Other than reducing the effect of the book, the missing gaps enhance the story supplemented by the thorough presentations of political history.