“FOREVER LOOKING BACK”: MEMORY AND UNRELIABILITY IN KAZUO ISHIGURO’S THE REMAINS OF THE DAY
“FOREVER LOOKING BACK”: MEMORY AND UNRELIABILITY IN KAZUO ISHIGURO’S THE REMAINS OF THE DAY

Summary/Abstract: Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day studies the notion of narrative unreliability through the exploration of the relationship between memories and one’s sense of identity. Ishiguro employs a narrator who communicates a struggle between reality and what he can partially remember about himself, his idea of Englishness and the house he has worked in, through gaps, omissions and ambiguities that install unreliability as the key vehicle with which the narration operates. However, the unreliable narrator in the novel challenges any notion of stable identity, and the impossibility of fixating either the national or the personal identity into singular, essentialist and idealist framing.

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