Ashok K Mohapatras notes for students

The Remains of the Day in Critical Perspective

Ishiguros The Remains of the Day( 1989) is a postwar novel, written in first-person narrative mode
in the form of a diary. The narrative is made up of a speaking voice, that of Stevens, an elderly
butler from Darlington Hall near Oxford, England, addressing an implied listener his own
reminiscences of life as a butler of Darlington Hall during the 1920s and 30s, the inter-war period
between the World Wars. However, the time of the narrative is July 1956, a time after the World
War II, from which Stevens looks back to his life dedicated to the service of Lord Darlington and
reminisces about the political and cultural changes that came about as the World War II drew to
a close.
Wartime Period and Lord Darlingtons controversial diplomatic career
Post-War England declined in its cultural authority and political power, yielding to the
emergence of the United States as the strongest and economically prosperous nation. The
deliberations on international politics and economic conditions of Europe by amateurish upperclass gentlemen began to be looked upon as useless and dubious in comparison to the expert
handling of these affairs by professional diplomats. Judged by the new climate of opinions, Lord
Darlingtons efforts to broker peace between Germany and the rest of European Powers as well as
the USA after the World War I seemed misguided and questionable in the postwar period. Given
the fact that he was nave enough in his diplomatic efforts to be used by the Nazis as a pawn, in
spite of his goodness, Lord Darlington was charged with promoting racism and Fascism. His
association with Oswald Mosleys Black Shirts Organization, secret parleys with the German
diplomats like Herr Karl-Heinz Bremann and Herr Ribbentrop, opposition to universal suffrage
and his expulsion of two girls of Jewish origin from his house staff earned him a bad name. In the
public perception and memory he became a thoroughly controversial figure. But Stevenss private
perception and memory are shown in the novel as blinkered and therefore limited because he is
seen as still adoring his master.
The chief irony of the novel lies in the conflict between Stevens perception of Lord Darlington
and the peoples perception of him. Additionally, the narrative of the novel produces irony as the
reader becomes aware of what Steven is trying to avoid telling his listener, and what the
limitations of Stevens account of himself are, and how he suppresses what he really thinks of
Lord Darlington, Miss Kenton and others. That Stevens is a repressed, obsessively self-deluding
and evasive person, and not reliable as a narrator, becomes evident through his mode of
narration. The time scheme of the narrative is structured in such a way that it offers a critical
perspective on the veracity (truthfulness) and reliability of Stevens account of his life and times.

Diagram of the Time Scheme of the Narrative

Present time of the reader reading the novel
Past time, i.e., July 1956 which is the narrative time (the time when Stevens narrates)
A remote past time, i.e., the inter war period of 1920s and 1930s which Stevens recalls
The reader reads in the present time Stevens narrative of a past time dated as July 1956, which is
retrospective of a still remote past. As a result, Steven moves back and forth between the time of
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his narrative, i.e., 1956 and the remote past. Thus, the present time perspective is telescoped into
the past time, which in turn is telescoped into the remote past time. The intervening gaps
between the time zones throw open the gaps within the narrative of memories that Stevens
weaves. The reader seems to overhear Stevens speaking to the implied listener, and from a critical
distance judges how his view point is challenged by other people whom he recalls and brings into
his narrative. His limited view-point, repressed desire for Miss Kenton and a nagging sense of
guilt about his associations with Darlington Hall are revealed to the reader even as he tries to
mask or evade them in his enunciation to the implied listener.
The narrative covers a span of 6 days of excursion on the part of Stevens through English West
Country to Salisbury, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, and finally to Weymouth. It begins
from July 1956, which is cited in the Prologue. Like diary entries, the narrative sections have been
marked under headings of places visited and the day numbered variously from DAY ONEEVENING to DAY-SIX EVENING.
Stevens as a repressed person
Stevens undertakes this journey, presumably for the first time in his life, as urged by his new
master, Mr Farraday, the American owner of Darlington House. Stevens could have taken this
outing as a pleasant diversion from the life of drudgery he has lived as a butler for twenty years,
but he cannot. He tries to justify to his implied listener that that his outing is more for the
purpose of meeting Miss Kenton and persuading her to come back to Darlington Hall than for
anything else. But his own narrative gives away his secret desire for rekindling his romance with
Miss Kenton, which he had suppressed in spite of her overtures toward him. He seems to harbor
the misunderstanding that Miss Kentons marriage turned out to be disaster, and that she might
be still interested in him. But what prevents him from making this motive clear? Why does he
have to take a professional plea for meeting her? As Mr. Farraday finds out about it, Stevens gets
embarrassed, acts coy and deduces that American as his new master is, his informal manners,
bantering geniality are the American personality traits which the English masters would never
display in their dealing with servants. He seems to be more at ease with the coldly formal and
humourless modes of interaction with everyone within Darlington Hall, which he mistakenly
believes to be the ideal British mode of concourse which is decorous and dignified. What is most
ridiculous is that he is nave enough to declare that the English are the only race to produce the
best butlers because unlike the continentals they are great at emotional restraint. He does not
understand that this nationalistic statement ironically undermines the dignity of Britain. At this
juncture one recalls E.M Forsters scathing criticism of English character for emotional deficiency
(see E.M. Forsters Notes on English Character). How did Stevens come to like the repressive
atmosphere of Darlington Hall in its good old days? This is because Stevens himself is a repressed
person.
As we read the novel we become aware of the basic difference between him and Miss Kenton.
Miss Kenton is a warm-hearted woman, who makes an uninhibited display of emotions and
sentiments of love for Stevens. She is clearheaded about what is right and wrong and vehemently
expresses her disagreement with Lord Darlingtons decision to remove from service the girls of
Jewish origin. Her sentiments and moral standards override protocols of professional conduct.
However, Stevens stifles all his feelings and refuses to take a moral position in deference to his
professional obligations as a butler. He believes that it is improper on his part to judge his
masters plans and decisions. He is of the opinion that the great butlers are great by virtue of
their ability to inhabit their professional role and inhabit to the utmost. No wonder then, he does
not have a private self and a personal world. Stevens has denied himself freedom, privacy, leisure
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and the ordinary joys of life. He refuses to indulge in romantic sentiments, nor does he allow
himself libidinal recreation. Even if he allows himself such recreations at the level of imagination
by reading romantic novels, he is secretive about it. When Miss Kenton finds him doing so, he
gives her the most ludicrous reason that reading of such fiction improves his vocabulary, which is
beneficial to his profession. He does not have a view point and opinion to offer on any matter lest
it should interfere with his profession. He believes as a butler he should not have a private self
and independent voice. Therefore, his idea of a butler is scarcely different from an automaton, to
be at the service of the master, to carry out his wishes blindly and never to judge him. As a servant
he seems to have internalized a somewhat oppressive hierarchical value system of class relations
of aristocratic English society which Darlington House symbolizes. His conception of dignity,
limited to that of a butler, is circumscribed by his unqualified loyalty and integrity as a servant to
his master. In addition, this notion of dignity embedded in the hierarchical relations of power in
the aristocratic society seems to be outmoded and perverse in the later days.
Stevens encounters and self-discovery
This is what Stevens discovers when he comes out of Darlington House. His discovery that the
England he thinks he inhabits is only imaginary, while the real England is far different. Times
have changed, and he discovers this pretty late like Rip Van Winkle, the character from
Washington Irvings short story, as it were. Stevens seems to live in a time warp. While
undertaking the motoring trip, he chooses to familiarize himself with the geography of England
by first going through Mrs. Jane Symons relevant volumes of The Wonders of England, which
were written during the 1930s. That the volumes have no accuracy and informative worth
especially because these are outdated does not occur to Stevens. When he praises the quiet
charm the English landscapes for their lack of obvious drama or spectacle by comparing them
with pictures of foreign landscapes he has seen in the encyclopedias and the National Geographic
he seems to be indulging in his fantasy of England with jingoistic sentiments rather than making
a factual statement. We begin to perceive that his imagination of the English landscape is itself a
reflection of his personality which avoids spectacle and drama. Once he is out of Darlington Hall,
he stands vulnerable to the outside world that looks unfamiliar and alien to him. But by
imaginatively re-creating the real world he tries to tame it. Similarly, he stands exposed to public
gaze and strikes the onlooker as an oddity or a time-piece from the past. He finds himself
incongruous and his opinions odd when he meets various kinds of people during the 6 days
excursion through West Country.
Formally dressed and driving around a posh Ford car, Stevens invites the discomforting
attention of the ordinary people. For instance, on day two he comes upon a Victorian house and
meets the caretaker, who out of curiosity asks him probingly if he really served at Darlington Hall
and knew Lord Darlington. Thereupon, Stevens gets nervous and gives a vague reply and hurries
away. He knows that he will have to encounter many embarrassing queries about Lord Darlington
and the distinguished house. He remembers another episode: an American couple Mrs. And Mr.
Wakefield visited Mr. Farraday at Darlington House. Mrs. Farraday noticed that an arch in the
House was a mock period piece, built during Lord Darlingtons time though it looked like it
belonged to the 17th century. When she asked Stevens about its truth, he ambiguously answered
he was not sure of it, although it was certainly possible. When she asked him suspiciously: But
tell me, Stevens, what was this Lord Darlington like? Presumably you must have worked for him,
he told a lie: I didnt madam, no. Clearly, Stevens is thrown off his balance to see strangers
dismissing Lord Darlington and his House as fake, and even calling him a mock butler. He feels
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as if his own existence has become questionable. Thus he has no option but to tell a face saving
lie.
In fact a profound sense of unease because of his association with Darlington Hall and its
controversial past affects Stevenss interaction with the people he meets. He also finds his views
on dignity challenged by Harry Smith even as the latter is very strongly opinionated, biased and
extreme in his view point. Stevens finds himself as an oddity from the past under the scrutinizing
gaze of Dr Carlisle whom he happens to meet at Moscombe and Little Compton. He finds himself
taking a defensive position to say to Dr Carlisle that dignity, as he understands it, boils down to
not removing ones shoes in public. This indicates that Stevens harbours a sense of guilt in the
depth of his bosom and tries to hide not only from others but also from him. What is most
interesting about the novel is that there is no omniscient narrator to tell us what happens to the
protagonist, but it is the protagonist himself who is recalling various people, episodes and scenes
which many a time implicate him in self-deception, evasion, concealment and even lame selfjustification.
Our critical understanding of the nature of Stevenss narrative and his memories
As readers we happen to overhear how he narrates as live voice to the implied listener what he
remembers. As I said earlier, there is a gap or a critical distance between the reader and the
implied listener, which is why the reader gets to know what the implied reader might miss out,
being in proximity with Stevens the narrator and being sympathetic towards him. Stevens does
his best to secure the implied readers assent to what he is saying about his life and times, and
naturally in most of the narrative he tries to present Lord Darlington and himself in the best
possible light. In other words, one can say that Stevenss narrative is self-interested. However, in
spite of himself, Stevens stumbles upon certain episodes and scenes that implicate him and Lord
Darlington.
As readers we observe that Stevenss memory narrative is disjointed, like all memory narratives
are. We also understand that memories can be scrappy, partial, disjointed and at times
misleading. Memories can also be coloured so much by imagination that the things imagined
might well appear as real in the act of recollection. Stevens does imagine some episodes and
presents them as though they were real. He jumps from one episode to another, and drifts from
one scene to another partly in a random way and partly through association of things recalled. His
narrative is at times characterized by remarkable clarity and at other times by fuzziness of
memory. At times Stevens is sure of his memory, and at other times he has self-doubts. But all
through, we become skeptical about his claims and contentions, although we view him
sympathetically.
Indeed, Brian W. Shaffer rightly commented while interviewing Ishiguro:
Most protagonists of Ishiguro, despite their apparent eagerness to divulge their thoughts and works,
work hard to conceal alarming significances and troubling consequences of their past lives.

Truly enough, in the postwar period in Japan, Ogata Shan in Ishiguros A Pale View of Hills
(1982) and Masuji Ono of An Artist of the Floating World (1986) are confronted with their own
past that implicates them in some guilt they have either committed or have been party to
under the war time circumstances. This guilt is largely about radical nationalist values and
sentiments these people were promoting, and on account of which Japan got embroiled in the
World War II, and this led to the loss of precious human lives and the bombing of Hiroshima
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and Nagasaki. Jingoism and war constitute the backdrop of many of Ishiguros novels,
including The Remains of the Day.
Stevens realization at the end of the narrative
Ishiguros protagonists come to feel the ordinariness of themselves, although having been all
through their lives at the centre of what they remember to be the most extraordinary moments
in the history of the world during and after the World Wars. With a sense of pride they
reminisce about their roles in history and even carry a sense of guilt in an altered climate of
opinions. The guilty memory becomes the narrative impulse, but the novels move towards a
denouement where the protagonists confront the lightness of their being and the sense of an
ending, and find it unbearable as they painfully realize that the burden of the guilty past they
carried has really been pointless because they are too insignificant to be credited with the
ethical value of guilty memory. They also come to realize that whatever personal loss and
suffering they had to undergo has no significance. Here is a painful reflection of Ono at the
end of An Artist of the Floating World:
We at least acted on what we believed and did our utmost. It is just that in the end we turned out
to be ordinary men. Ordinary men with no special gifts of insight. It was simply our misfortune to
have been ordinary men during such times.

And yet with remarkable grace they accept this truth and learn to live the brief remainder of
their lives without bitterness. Similarly, towards the end of The Remains of the Day Stevens
reflects thus:
[] I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day.
After all, what we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not
turned out quite as we might have wished. The hard reality is, surely, that for the likes of me, there
is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the
hub of the world who employ our services. What is the point in worrying oneself too much about
what one could or could not have done to control the course of ones life?

Significance of the title

Now one begins to understand the significance of the title of the novel. It is all about coming
to terms with ones uneasy past and guilty memories in the twilight of ones day that is
coming to an end. Throughout the novel the imagery of the last of the daylight, grey light
and rain, last of daylight, remaining minutes of daylight and this evening, these last few
hours press upon the readers consciousness with an inexorable sense of an ending. There is
certainly a mood of nostalgia and a sense of loss that the narrative builds up. But Stevens
learns to accept the remains of the day gracefully.
After bidding farewell to Miss Kenton, who turns out to be happily married with the new
name Mrs. Benn, contrary to his supposition, Stevens feels dejected as he has nothing to look
forward to. While sitting at the pier on Weymouth beach he gets into conversation with a
man, who assures him that the evening is the best part of the day. The man suggests to him
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that one should quietly sit up to enjoy it having finished with the work of the day. Stevens
sits there to watch the pier lights being turned on and the sky being set aglow. What he
realizes is that the remains of ones day are really beautiful; all one needs is the eye to
discover the beauty and joy of it, and remain contented with the life one has lived despite
ones mistakes and disappointments. To brood over ones past and think that life could have
taken a better turn in a different set of circumstances than those one faced is both fruitless
and a source of unhappiness. One should rather learn to accept things as they present
themselves. Stevens begins to realize all this and learns to change his attitude towards his
profession and decides to live life in a much different way. For instance, he realizes at the end
of the novel that bantering is hardly an unreasonable duty for an employer to expect a
professional to perform. He wants to change himself to suit the taste and temperament of
the new American master.
The novel ends ironically. We begin to wonder if Stevens has really changed to become a
new person altogether. In one sense he has, but in another sense he has hardly changed. He
remains the same old servant, eager to please the master even as the masters keep changing.
He is like an old dog trying to learn a new trick. There is something oddly comic and yet
supremely tragic about the fate of Stevens in the remains of his day. Without a woman and a
friend in his life he shall have to get on with the his butlership and please the new master
with changes in his manners and style of service until perhaps he shall drop dead while on
duty like his own father.
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