What the Butler Recalled - Memory and Self-Deception in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day

Abstract

This essay focuses on the main character, Mr Stevens, in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and his recollections of his forty years as a butler at Darlington Hall. The novel, in the form of a diary, describes a six-day travel to visit the former housekeeper, Miss Kenton, and is concentrated on Stevens’s introspection and reflections on his memories. My intention has been to illustrate the different cognitive aspects of Stevens’s recollections by using the theories of Daniel L. Schacter, explained in The Seven Sins of Memory, thus giving examples of different memory imperfections found in Stevens’s narrative. In this essay, I also consider the psychological aspects of Stevens’s memories by focusing on Freudian repression and self-deception. Simon Boag’s Freudian Repression has here served as a source of knowledge and inspiration. My aim has also been to show how to use The Remains of the Day in an English B course at the upper secondary school and focus on memory and self-deception and emphasize the importance of literature reading in the language classroom. Discussions and reading logs are suggested and I give examples of different didactic methods to use when reading the novel in the language classroom, thus inspiring and emphasizing the analysis of the main character in the novel, Mr Stevens. My conclusion states that Stevens’s narrative reveals a variety of memory imperfections which could be described and categorized with the help of Schacter’s theories. I also show how Stevens’s memories reveal his self-deceptive and repressed state of mind. Furthermore, I stress the pedagogical benefits achieved by working with the novel in the classroom.