Ishiguro

A Butler's Quest for Dignity: "The Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro

In both its form and content this ventriloquistic novel-- a tragicomic monologue by an idealistic, not unheroic, though sadly self-deceived English butler in his sixties -- proceeds as if the realistic English novel of manners, like Britannia herself, still ruled the waves. In fact, Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day is both an homage to traditional English forms and a dramatic critique of them. It implies that the British Empire was rooted in its subjects' minds, manners and morals, and argues, tacitly, that its self-destructive flaws were embodied in the defensive snobbery, willful blindness role-playing and especially the locutions of its domestic servants.