Thesis (M.A.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of English, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Aug. 11, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 33-34). Also issued in print.

This paper deals with the novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and explores the feeling of unease established by the author. The theoretical framework for this paper is based on questions of humanity and thus makes use of existentialism as established by Sartre and Kierkegaard. Initially the essay explores how the setting of the novel helps establish a familiar world with unfamiliar elements. After that questions of humanity are raised and how these questions relate to the clones by showing that the clones have human qualities yet are not treated as human. These questions are expanded in the following part about ethical issues and it is shown that the reader is tempted by the author to cross certain ethical boundaries leading to a feeling of unease. Special attention is given to freedom of choice in the third part of the analysis and it is shown how the choices of the clones are very limited, especially if they are considered human. The fourth part then discusses the narrative perspective and how the narrator Kathy H. is used by the author to establish a connection and a perception of the narrator as human.

The emergence of novelists such as Kazuo Ishiguro and Timothy Mo in the final decades of the twentieth century has often been taken as evidence of an increasing multiculturalism both in Britain and the wider world, as well as in British literature itself. With their dual British-Asian heritage and their interrogation of notions of history, identity and agency, these authors are often celebrated as proponents of the cosmopolitan novel, a genre which rejects binary notions of East and West or national interest in favour of a transnational mode of cooperation and cohabitation. Reading against the grain of such celebratory notions of the cosmopolitan, this thesis suggests that if the novels of Ishiguro and Mo are concerned with the exigencies of the cosmopolitan world, then they portray that world as one which remains split and haunted by divisions between East and West, past and present, self and ‘other’. That is, they present a cosmopolitan world in which the process of negotiation and contact is difficult, confrontational and often violent. Drawing upon Fredric Jameson’s notion of the ‘political unconscious’, I suggest that these novels in fact reveal the origins of the rather deeper divisions which have emerged in the first decade of the twenty first century, analysing the ways in which they reveal a degree of cultural incommensurability, frustrated cosmopolitan agency and the enduring power and appeal of the nation state. I also suggest that the contemporary critical obsession with the spatial – whereby cosmopolitanism’s work is carried out in ‘Third Spaces’, interstitial sites, and border zones – fails to recognize the importance of temporal concerns to the experience of cosmopolitan living. My analysis of the novels of Ishiguro and Mo is thus concerned with the way in which the temporal is a key concern of these works at both a narratological and thematic level. In particular, I identify a curious ‘double-time’ of cosmopolitanism, whereby the busyness which we might expect of the period is counterpointed by a simultaneous sense of stasis and inactivity. I argue that it is within this unsettling contemporary ‘double-time’ that the cracks and fissures in the narrative of cosmopolitanism begin to emerge.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

The idea of witnessing through the lense of cultural trauma is one which has been described by Dominick LaCapra and others as a encompassing and far reaching from the private to the public spheres. In some cases, when trauma is so overwhelming, the response is to remain silent and do nothing to acknowledge acceptance of the causing factors of the cultural trauma. Novelists such as Kazuo Ishiguro employ various methods of discussing cultural trauma in their works. Ishiguro’s novels, Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day harbor narrators whose inner traumas reflect the trauma of the culture at large. The silent spaces in these novels arise in situations where the extreme measures taken by governing entities is also clearly stated, particularly in their discussions of the Holocaust and World War II.

The focus of this essay is Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. My central claim is that a theme of belonging underpins the novel and is recurrent in a number of different ways. In my reading, I utilise Jean Baudrillard’s postmodern critical concepts to produce this interpretation. I argue that the theme of belonging can be interpreted using Baudrillard’s loss of the real and hyperreal concepts. The usefulness of these concepts is primarily based on the element of clones and cloning in the narrative. Baudrillard’s theories deal with signs and images that do not correspond with the realities that they are meant to represent, mirroring the predicament of the Hailsham students in Never Let Me Go. My essay presents three main areas of discussion in relation to the theme of belonging. Firstly, Hailsham and the students are examined using the loss of the real/hyperreal concepts. The second area deals with belongings as a recurrent motif. In my reading, the dual meaning of the word belonging is an important factor in identifying the theme. This particular discussion deals also with ownership. The final area of discussion revolves around the issue of genre, or rather genres. The novel’s mixture of character drama and science-fiction dystopia is discussed in relation to the loss of the real/hyperreal. / Uppsatsens fokus är Kazuo Ishiguros Never Let Me Go. Min huvudtes är att det finns ett tema av tillhörighet som utmärker romanen. I min läsning applicerar jag Jean Baudrillards postmoderna kritiska begrepp i tolkningen av texten. I uppsatsen argumenterar jag att temat av tillhörighet kan tolkas med hjälp Baudrillards begrepp förlust av verkligheten samt hyperverkligheten. Användbarheten av dessa begrepp bygger på förekomsten av kloner och kloning i texten. Baudrillards teorier handlar om tecken och bilder som ej motsvarar verkligheten på ett tydligt sätt, och denna brist på korrespondens mellan verklighet och representation avspeglar Hailsham-elevernas situation i Never Let Me Go. Min uppsats har tre huvuddiskussioner i förhållande till temat tillhörighet. För det första, undersöks Hailsham och eleverna med med hjälp av begreppen förlust av verkligheten/hyperverkligheten. Andra diskussionsområden handlar om tillhörighet/er som återkommande tema. I min läsning, är det faktum att ordet tillhörighet har två definitioner en viktig aspekt när man ska identifiera temat. Denna diskussion handlar också om äganderätt. Den sista diskussionen handlar om romanens genre, eller genrer. Även romanens blandning av karaktärsdrama och science-fictiondystopi diskuteras i förhållande till Baudrillards begrepp förlust av verkligheten/hyperverkligheten.

A presente dissertação busca oferecer uma leitura do romance Os Vestígios do Dia, de Kazuo Ishiguro, partindo do pressuposto de que o entendimento da obra requer um olhar sob quatro ângulos temporais: o presente da narrativa (1956, ano da Crise de Suez); a época em que se localiza cada fato narrado (em geral, o período entreguerras); uma espécie de passado mítico de uma Grande Inglaterra ao qual o narrador se referencia internamente; e o ano da recepção imediata da obra (1989, ano da queda do Muro de Berlim, embora o livro tenha sido publicado meses antes desse acontecimento). Segundo esta leitura, o romance consistiria em uma espécie de obra de fim de século que lançaria um olhar de estranhamento para o século XX a partir da perspectiva de um narrador que se vincula a valores anteriores a isso e de um leitor que avalia tanto esse narrador quanto seus oponentes de 1956 com o privilégio de uma distância temporal que criaria um efeito de ironia dramática. / This dissertation seeks to offer an interpretation of Kazuo Ishiguros novel The Remains of The Day based on the assumption that understanding the work requires viewing it from four temporal angles: the narrative present (1956, the year of the Suez Crisis); the time in which each narrated fact is located (the interwar period, in most cases); a sort of mythical past of a Great Britain to which the narrator refers inwardly; and the year of the immediate reception of the work (1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall, though the book is published several months before the USSR falls apart). According to this reading, the novel would consist of a kind of fin-de-siècle work that throws a look of estrangement upon the twentieth century from the perspective of a narrator who is linked to values prior to this time and a reader who looks at both this narrator and his opponents in 1956 with the privilege of a temporal distance that end up creating an effect of dramatic irony.

A presente dissertação busca oferecer uma leitura do romance Os Vestígios do Dia, de Kazuo Ishiguro, partindo do pressuposto de que o entendimento da obra requer um olhar sob quatro ângulos temporais: o presente da narrativa (1956, ano da Crise de Suez); a época em que se localiza cada fato narrado (em geral, o período entreguerras); uma espécie de passado mítico de uma Grande Inglaterra ao qual o narrador se referencia internamente; e o ano da recepção imediata da obra (1989, ano da queda do Muro de Berlim, embora o livro tenha sido publicado meses antes desse acontecimento). Segundo esta leitura, o romance consistiria em uma espécie de obra de fim de século que lançaria um olhar de estranhamento para o século XX a partir da perspectiva de um narrador que se vincula a valores anteriores a isso e de um leitor que avalia tanto esse narrador quanto seus oponentes de 1956 com o privilégio de uma distância temporal que criaria um efeito de ironia dramática. / This dissertation seeks to offer an interpretation of Kazuo Ishiguros novel The Remains of The Day based on the assumption that understanding the work requires viewing it from four temporal angles: the narrative present (1956, the year of the Suez Crisis); the time in which each narrated fact is located (the interwar period, in most cases); a sort of mythical past of a Great Britain to which the narrator refers inwardly; and the year of the immediate reception of the work (1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall, though the book is published several months before the USSR falls apart). According to this reading, the novel would consist of a kind of fin-de-siècle work that throws a look of estrangement upon the twentieth century from the perspective of a narrator who is linked to values prior to this time and a reader who looks at both this narrator and his opponents in 1956 with the privilege of a temporal distance that end up creating an effect of dramatic irony.

Kazuo Ishiguro's novels The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go exhibit many of the same characteristics as his other works. Out of all of those works, however, only these two novels have been adapted to film as of yet. Because of Ishiguro's reliance on first-person narration and point-of-view his novels are particularly more problematic to adapt to screen. This phenomenon is partially due to the audio-visually dependent medium of film and the camera lens' limitations when it comes to exhibiting character interiority. Therefore, the effect of the translation to screen for both of these films is a shift in how the viewing audience responds to the characters as both characters and as human beings. This shift at times augments, expands, or changes the philosophical implications of Ishiguro's works. This paper explores those shifts and permutations and argues that they can ultimately lead to a more empathetic connection between the viewer and the characters in the stories.