A Study of Unreliable Narration in The Remains of the Day

Abstract

The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro’s masterpiece, takes the journey of Stevens, a butler at Darlington Hall, as the main line, and unfolds a mixed narrative of scenes along the way and memories of the past from Stevens’s point of view. In retrospect, Stevens tried to find the values and ideals of the individual at Darlington Hall in those past years. The work is based on Stevens’s personal memories, reflecting the writer’s thinking and writing about individual living conditions. This paper mainly focuses on the unreliable narrative in The Remains of the Day, by which analyses the writing purpose of Ishiguro. Eventually, this paper shows the writer’s ultimate reflection on the pursuit and futility of life.