Ishiguro's Remains of the Day: The Empire Strikes Back

MeeraTamaya

A few years ago, at the height of the race riots in England, there
was a widely publicized picture of an Indian woman leading a protest
march, carrying a placard which read, "We are here because you were
there." The literary analogue to this phenomenon of the British colonial
sins coming home to roost is the number of writers born outside England's
shores, from the West Indies to India to Japan, now domiciled in England,
who write with unblinking clarity about the empire and the final spasms
of its delirium tremens. The best known of these writers are V. S. Naipaul
and Salman Rushdie, and now we have Kazuo Ishiguro, born in Japan,
raised and educated in England, who has become one of England's
leading younger novelists.' Ishiguro is unique among post-colonial writers
because unlike Rushdie, for example, who writes at such unwieldy length
and with much obtrusive polemics about the consequences of history,
Ishiguro uses that consummately economical and British literary form-
the novel of manners-to deconstruct British society and its imperial
history.
Elliptically alluded to, never directly mentioned, historical events
are the powerful absences which shape the characters and narratives of
all three of Ishiguro's novels. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
never referred to, echoes in the intricacies of the fragmented lives in A
Pale View of Hills and An Artistof the FloatingWorld.In his recentand
most acclaimed novel, The Remains of the Day, it is the dismantling of
Britain's colonial empire, mentioned only as the date on which the
narrative begins, which provides the determining historical context of the
characters' attitudes and aspirations. The date is July 1956, when Presi-
dent Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, thus heralding
the end of Britain's long reign as the world's foremost colonial power.
Not so coincidentally, on that particular day, the narrator/protagonist of
the novel, Stevens, the quintessential English butler, sets out on a journey
across England and, in the process, recovers the tragic truth of his past,
a truth inextricably bound up with the history of his country.
Even as England has to accommodate itself to the rise of America
as an imperial power, Stevens, after having served Lord Darlington for
35 years, has to adjust himself to an American master, Mr. Farraday, who
has bought Darlington Hall because he wanted "a genuine grand old
English house" and "a genuine old fashioned English butler" (124) to go
with it. As Stevens reminisces during his cross country trip, we learn more
than Stevens is willing to reveal (either to himself or to the reader) about
the tragedy of his misguided devotion to Lord Darlington. While critics
have praised Ishiguro's masterful control of tone and narrative strategies
which make this oblique, and therefore all the more shocking, discovery
possible, they have also noted that Stevens' self-abnegation in the service
of his master reverberates with larger implications about British politics,

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culture and society.2 It is this aspect of the novel I wish to examine more
closely, focussing in particular on the ways in which the dynamic between
the upper and lower classes, exemplified by Lord Darlington and his
butler, duplicates very precisely England's relationship to its colonies. It
is my contention that Stevens' private tragedy is precipitated by what
Albert Memmi in his seminal study The Colonizer and the Colonized
terms the cruel "hoax"by which the colonizer or master ensures that the
servant exists "only as a function of the needs of the colonizer, i.e., be
transformed into a pure colonized" (86).
The best known paradigm for this reciprocity between master/
servant, colonizer/colonized is the bond/bondage between Prospero and
Caliban in The Tempest. As Mannoni, Fanon and others have convinc-
ingly argued, Shakespeare vividly dramatizes the specific steps by which
Prospero, a typical colonizer, proceeds to establish mastery over a foreign
territory.3Like most colonizers, Prospero manages to achieve in an alien
country what he has failed to achieve in his own: control. He has lost
his own duchy to a scheming brother because, absorbed in the study of
magic, he has neglected "worldly ends." England has a long tradition of
sending its social misfits abroad to seek their future. Customarily, younger
sons, illegitimate sons and others who could not succeed in their own
Hobbesian society forged a new identity elsewhere. At the extreme end
of this spectrum, convicts from over-crowded prisons were also shipped
abroad: Australia for example, became a haven for British convicts.
Having failed in his ducal responsibilities, Prospero is cast adrift on a boat
by a villainous brother, but manages to land on a remote island where
he is hospitably received by Caliban, a friendly native. Soon, however,
the roles are reversed: the guest establishes hegemony over the island and
turns the host into a servant.
Caliban details the stages by which this reversal occurs. As he tells
Prospero:
Whenthou cam'stfirst,
Thou strok'stme and made much of me; wouldst give me
Waterwith berriesin't;and teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night. And then I loved thee
And showed thee all the qualitieso' th' isle.
The fresh springs,brine pits, barrenplace and fertile.
Cursedbe I that did so! All the charms
Of Sycorax-toads, beetles, bats, light on you!
For I am all the subjectsthat you have,
Whichfirst was mine own king;and here you sty me
In this hardrock, whiles you do keep from me
The rest o' th' island. (i.ii. 332-344)

The scenario Caliban recounts so graphically has been played out

with infinite variations by the colonial enterprise, whether it is political,
economic or religious, or all three, as is often the case. It is common
practice to woo the natives with a combination of persuasive talk and
gifts. There is also a display of Western abstract science, astronomy, for

46
example, which suitably impresses the natives, who in their turn offer
the much more useful knowledge, indispensable for physical survival:
"The fresh springs, brine pits, barren place and fertile." The seemingly
helpless visitors soon take over, commandeering the natural resources for
their own use as well as for profit. Cotton from Egypt, for example, was
transported and fed to British mills, and the resulting finished product,
English chintz, sold to the natives at extortionate prices. Prospero's links
to the mother country are broken off, however, so he turns the island
and its natives, Ariel and Caliban, into a source of profit for himself, so
that they substitute for what he has lost. On the island he can continue
his interrupted studies in magic while the natives minister to his physical
comfort much as his servants did in Milan.
This process of drawing sustenance from the host and weakening
him can most accurately be described as parasitical. According to the
OED, a parasite is, "An animal or plant which lives in or upon another
organism (its host) and draws its nutrients directly from it." Colonialism,
a form of human parasitism, has basically two major aspects: the colonizer
draws not only physical nourishment, but also stimulation for the
imagination at the expense of the natives. For example, the British, like
Prospero, created mini-Englands wherever they established themselves
and turned the natives into bureaucrats and servants who oiled the engines
of quotidian life. They also used the conquered territories as food for
their imaginations. From Kipling to Paul Scot, the so-called "dark"con-
tinents from India to Africa served as metaphors on which they could
project their own deepest, darkest fantasies. Enslaving Caliban is
necessary so that Prospero can pursue his interrupted avocation, magic
and the arts, which not only give him pleasure but enable him to extend
and strengthen his hegemony over the island. His magic enables him to
terrorize the inhabitants, immobilize the new castaways, and awe them
with theatrical displays.
The key to establishing such mastery is, of course, teaching the
natives the colonizers' language. Prospero instructs Caliban in the use of
his own tongue. As is well known, Thomas Babington Macauley followed
the same principles when he recommended an English education for
Indians.4He recognized that the consolidation of the empire necessitated
that the bureaucrats, the army, the police, etc., needed to learn just
enough English to obey the dictates of the British government. An
authoritative and imaginative use of the language was not part of the
bargain. However, Caliban understands the precise nature of Prospero's
designs and tries his best to subvert them: "You taught me language, and
my profit on't / Is, I know how to curse" (1.11. 363-364). Caliban resists
domestication, recognizing it for what it is: enslavement and servitude.
Unlike Caliban the recalcitrant servant, Stevens, the butler, is the
apotheosis of the perfect manservant who obliterates all traces of his own
personality, all instinctive drives and desires, all individual dreams in the
service of his master. The dream servant is none other than the English
butler, the human robot with the "correct"accent, the "correct"manners.
Stevens expresses, without a hint of self-awareness or irony, the
quintessential Englishness of butlers:
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 It is sometimes said that butlers only truly exist in England. Other
countries,whatevertitle is used, have only manservants.I tend to believe
thisis true.Continentalsareunableto be butlersbecausethey area breed
incapable of the emotional restraintwhich only the English race are
capable of ... when you think of a great butler, he is bound, almost
by definition,to be an Englishman.(43)
It is no wonder, then, that the English butler has acquired the status of
an icon in the popular imagination. In the first half of this century, P.G.
Wodehouse's comic creation, Jeeves, a combination of nanny, father, god
and butler to the upper class twit, Bertie Wooster, achieved immense
popularity.5 More recently, Hudson, the butler in the very successful,
long-running PBS television series Upstairs Downstairs, is Stevens' imme-
diate forbear. Jeeves, Hudson and Stevens are indeed Prospero's dream
of Caliban-divested of sexuality (an English butler with a sex life is un-
imaginable), perfectly trained and domesticated, who can use his mas-
ter's language not to curse but to respond precisely and briefly to his
commands. He fits Memmi's description of the colonized: "He is hardly
a human being. He tends rapidly toward becoming an object" (86).
As Stevens realizes, the perfect servant learns to play the role
expected of him:
The great butlers are great by virtue of their ability to inhabit their
professionalrole and inhabit it to the utmost;they will not be shaken
by externalevents, however surprising,alarmingor vexing. They wear
their professionalismas a decent gentlemanwill wear his suit. (42-43)

The metaphors of acting, of clothing, reveal how much Stevens' notions

derive from entrenched Britishtraditions best known in such often quoted
Shakespearean rags as: "All the world's a stage / And all the men and
women players" (As You Like It) and "Life's but a walking shadow, a
poor player / that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, / And is heard
no more" (Macbeth). The British class system makes such role playing
mandatory as every individual is expected to act out the role assigned
to him/her at birth. A crucial element of such "acting" is the rigorous
submission of the private self to the demands of the public persona.
This self-effacement is bred in the bone from generation to
generation, even as the British class system has survived largely intact
through the centuries. In Stevens' case, hs is not only the son of a butler,
but he also consciously strives to live up to the ideal of service achieved
by his father. He narrates, with great pride, one particular incident in
his father's life which exemplifies the famed British "self-restraint."
Stevens' father is told by his master, an industrialist, that a general who
was responsible for the needless death of a large number of young men
during the Boer war is expected for luncheon. Among the young men
who had died, thanks to the General's criminal irresponsibility, was
Stevens' much loved only brother. The industrialist, who knows about
the tragedy, offers to give his butler the day off. Stevens' father, ever
dutiful, recognizing that "his employer's business aspirations hung on the

48
smooth running of the house party" (41) refuses, and even volunteers to
act as valet to the general, thus suffering "the intimate proximity for four
days with the man he detests" (42). The irony of this self abasement,
seemingly unnoticed by Stevens and his father, is that the business
dealings are thoroughly unsavory-illegal arms dealing-and both
Stevens and his father do not question whether their sacrifices are for
a worthy cause. This blindness foreshadows Stevens' own colossal
obtuseness as to his master's true moral stature.
Some of the most painfully ironic moments in the novel occur
when Stevens lives up to the standards set by his father so well that he
sacrifices his dying father'sneeds in order to ensure that Lord Darlington's
dinner party runs smoothly. Summoned to his father's deathbed by the
housekeeper, Stevens continues to serve port to the assembled guests,
telling the housekeeper, "Miss Kenton, please don't think me unduly im-
proper in not ascending to see my father in his deceased condition at
this moment. You see, I know my father would have wished me to carry
on just now" (106). As the assembled guests, almost all rich and powerful,
feast and drink in elegant surroundings, the death of Stevens' father in
a cell-like room is described in terms strangely evocative of human
sacrifice. Ishiguro makes the parallel with delicate economy. As Stevens
describes it, "I had expected the room to smell of death, but on account
of Mrs. Mortimer-or else her apron-the room was dominated by the
smell of roasting" (109). Thus with a single olfactory detail, Ishiguro
inverts the colonizer's nightmare, beloved of cartoonists, of the cannibal
chief dining on a well-roasted Englishman. Of course, the reality of the
colonial situation is that it is the English, not the natives, who for centuries
fed off of the colonies. It's a well-established fact of history that colonizers
systematically depleted their colonies of their natural resources, starved
the natives, and enriched themselves and their own country.
Such exploitation was not always achieved through the use of
force. As studies of colonialism have demonstrated, very often the natives
colluded with their masters because they were misled into identifying
with the colonizers' interests (Memmi, Fanon et. al.).6 Similarly, Stevens
and his father fervently believe that they can best fulfill themselves by
identifying totally with their masters' ambitions. As Stevens expresses it
with his characteristically absurd brand of grandiloquence:

As far as I am concerned,MissKenton,my vocation will not be fulfilled

until I have done all I can to see his lordship throughall the tasks he
has set himself. The day his lordship'swork is complete, the day he is
able to rest on his laurels, content in the knowledge that he has done
all anyone could ever reasonablyask of him, only on thatday, MissKen-
ton, will I be able to call myself, as you put it, a well content man. (173)

The comic absurdity of Stevens talking about his job as a butler in

religious terms as a "vocation" should not obscure the tragic dimensions
of his delusions. He repudiates all personal relationships, including the
tentative gestures of tenderness by Miss Kenton, and eschews all personal

49
comfortsand pleasures,choosingto live in a small,damp, dark,austere
room like a monk, because he finds fulfillment, or so he claims, in
devotedly servingLordDarlingtonthe way a novice would serve a god.
Indeed,DarlingtonHall,for all its grandeur,resemblesa luxurious
monasteryin one key aspect:none of its inmateshas any kind of sex life.
From the masterdown to the housekeeper,all lead celibatelives, stren-
uously sublimatingtheir libidinalenergies in the performanceof their
duties. Lord Darlington, wholly consumed by internationalpolitics,
doesn'thave any intimaterelationship,either with a woman or a man.
Indeed, he seems asexual.Stevens stiffly resiststhe housekeeper,Miss
Kenton'stentative overtures,and is primly disapprovingof romance
between domestics,"I have always found such liaisonsa seriousthreat
to the order of the house" (51). He prefers to read romanticnovels in
secretinstead,andthe scenewhereMissKentoncatcheshim at it provides
one of many understatedcomic episodes in the novel.
At the otherend of the scale, thereis a superblyexecuted farcical
scene when Stevensattempts,with his usualstiff pompousness,the task
entrustedto him by LordDarlington-that of instructingyoung Reginald
Cardinalin, as LordDarlingtonputs it, "Thefacts of life, Stevens.Birds,
bees" (82). Reginald is the son of Sir David Cardinal,a politically in-
fluentialfigureand LordDarlington'sgodson. SirDavid has been trying
to instructhis son in mattersof sex for the past five yearswithoutsuccess.
Now the paternal concern has reached panic proportionsas young
Reginaldis aboutto be married.Thata fathershouldassumehis twenty-
three year old is ignorantof sex is funny enough,but Lord Darlington's
choice of words when he asksStevensto carryout the taskis instructive:
"I'msorry to bring up a thing like this, Stevens. I know you must be
awfully busy yourself.But I can'tsee how on earthto make it go away"
(81). Passingon the task of sex educationto his butleralong with other
menial tasks,puts sex in its proper place, so to speak. The empire and
its discontentsrest on sublimationand, predictablyStevenstakeshis cue
from his master.
He does so because of a cruel misapprehension:he believes that
LordDarlingtonis a greatmanand DarlingtonHalla noble housewhich,
alongwith otherstatelyhomes, symbolizesthe greatnessof England.He
views the world,he tellsus, not as a ladderto move up on, as otherbutlers
did, but "as a wheel" (115) with England as the hub. By runningDar-
lington Hall with all the precisionof a general commandingan army,
Stevens hopes he is making a contributionto England'srole as empire
builder.He polishesthe silver, for instance,with religiouszeal because
LordDarlingtonhasimpresseduponhim thatthe highpolishof the silver
will put his guest, Lord Halifax,in a more amenableframe of mind, so
that he will not balk at negotiatingwith the Germanambassador,Herr
Ribbentrop.The brillianceof Ishiguro'snarrativestrategyis such that,
just as Lord Darlingtonhas convinced Stevens of the importanceand
nobilityof his diplomaticmaneuvering,the intimatetone of the narrative
beguilesthe readerinto a curiouscomplicitywith Stevens'point of view;
this enables one to empathize with Stevens even as the butler is com-
pletely takenin by Lord Darlington.Thus Ishiguromakesit possible for
50
the reader to experience every nuance of the cruelly comic hoax which
lies at the core of the master/servant, colonizer/colonized relationship.
However, midway through the novel the reader is alerted to the
fact that not all is what it appears to be. Even the solid monumentality
of Darlington Hall, the manifestation in brick and stone of England's long
and unbroken history of "greatness" is not the real thing. As Mrs.
Wakefield, a rich American anglophile, discovers after examining a stone
arch that frames the doorway to the dining room, "This arch here looks
seventeenth century, but isn't it the case that it was built quite recently?
... It's very beautiful. But it is probably a kind of mock period piece
done only a few years ago" (123). Just as Darlington Hall is a "mock"
period piece, Lord Darlington's "greatness" seems suspect. Our
uneasiness about the veracity of Stevens' narrative deepens when he
denies having worked for Lord Darlington at crucial moments during
the trip. After having expounded at length on how proud he was to have
served such a "great" master, why does Stevens feel compelled to lie?
Was his service to Lord Darlington something to be ashamed of, in spite
of all his protestations to the contrary? What is the truth about the "great"
Lord Darlington?
The truth is that Lord Darlington, far from having been admirable,
was actually a crypto Fascist, busily engaged in the appeasement of
Hitler. Influenced by Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the notorious
British Union of Fascists, who is a frequent visitor at Darlington Hall,
Lord Darlington believes that the world should properly be divided into
two classes: the strong and the weak, leaders and followers, masters and
servants. He does not really subscribe to the notion that "the will of the
people is the wisest arbitrator" on which the democratic process is
founded (197). As he expounds to Stevens,

Look at Germanyand Italy, Stevens. See what strongleadership

can do if it'sallowed to act. None of thisuniversalsuffragethere.If your
house is on fire, you don't call the householdto the drawing room and
debate the variousoptions for escape for an hour, do you? It may have
been all very well once, but the world's a complicated place now. The
man in the street can't be expected to know enough about politics,
economics, world commerce and what have you. (199)

This little summation of Fascist doctrine comes after the "kind"

Lord Darlington subjects Stevens to a scene that is as painful to the reader
(Stevens claims not to have been too disturbed to it) as Prince Hall's
demonstration of the waiter Francis' illiteracy in Shakespeare's Henry IV
Part I.7 Stevens is summoned to the drawing room well after midnight
to answer a few questions put to him by Lord Darlington's friends. They
proceed, with barely an attempt at concealing their patronizing attitude,
to quiz him on the subtle intricacies of foreign policies and international
trade. Stevens sees that, "it was clearly expected that I be baffled by the
question" and makes the "suitable response" expected of him which is
the stilted butler's answer, "I'm very sorry, sir; I said, 'but I'm unable to
be of assistance on this matter" (195). He intones this standard response

51
repeatedly ratherlike a parrot, much to the edification of Lord Darlington
and his friends. Thus Stevens fulfills another function of the colonized-
he provides entertainment besides physical sustenance to his masters. As
mentioned earlier, parasitism embraces the metaphoric recastng of the
colonized into imaginative forms in literature, myth and art.
Although it is not clear whether Stevens is really unable to answer
the question or whether he pretends ignorance in order to fulfill the
expectations of his social betters, he ends up internalizing Lord Dar-
lington's views: "There is, after all, a real limit to how much ordinary
people can learn and know, and to demand that each and every one of
them contribute 'strong opinions' to the great debates of the nation
cannot, surely, be wise" (194). In other words, like his master, Stevens
abrogates England's chief claim to greatness-its claim to being the
"mother" of democracies, a claim which, historically, has provided the
major justification for imposing its sovereignty over much of the globe.
At the end of the novel, Harry Smith, a farmer in Devon, reiterates
the idea of England's greatness as the model of democracy:

And it's one of the privileges of being born Englishthat no matterwho

you are, no matterif you're rich or poor, you are born free and you're
born so that you can express your opinion freely and vote in your
member of parliamentor vote him out. That's what dignity's really
about, if you'll excuse me, sir. (186)

His passionate defense of democratic ideals is sabotaged by the actual

circumstances that have drawn him into a debate with Stevens. The chief
reason for Harry Smith's colloquy is that he mistakes Stevens for a "posh"
gentleman, a mistake that Stevens subtly encourages, without actually
lying, by implying that he has rubbed shoulders with the likes of Churchill
and Lord Halifax. Throughout the motoring trip, Stevens' borrowed
clothes, borrowed car and borrowed accent and manner cause various
people to almost mistake him for his master. In Devon, having run out
of gas, he is offered hospitality by a simple farming couple. By a species
of English bush telegraph, word spreads that a notable gentleman has
landed in the village, and the farmers gather and question him avidly
about his life and ideas. As always, like a good butler and a good
Englishman, Stevens plays the role he is called upon to perform and
expounds on issues, such as the question of dignity, with which he has
already entertained the reader. According to Stevens, dignity is
something a gentleman has. But Harry Smith's democratic notion that
"dignity's something every man and woman in this country can strive
for and get" (186) is undermined because he mistakes Stevens for a
gentleman and that is the chief reason he takes Stevens' pronouncements
so seriously. He thus underscores, with comic irony, Stevens' own view,
learnt from Lord Darlington, that ordinary people may not be qualified
to hold strong opinions.
Stevens' brief masquerade uncovers a deeper problem which he
has in common with the colonized. When Britain acquired much of the
globe, it also trained the army, the police and the bureaucrats to aid in

52
their own exploitation. Part of the training was to turn them into brown
Englishmen, speaking their masters' language, wearing their masters'
clothes. A Western educated colonial is by definition a would-be
Englishman who, bereft of his native identity, is often a figure of fun
for either not speaking English well enough or so well that he sounds
too precise and stiff. As he motors across England, Stevens is often
mistaken for a "posh" gentleman, but never for long. He is soon found
out, and the initial gratification at the mistake turns into acute
embarrassment and humiliation.
In Devon, while the "radical"Harry Smith treats Stevens with the
kind of respectful regard that he would accord his betters, a doctor walks
in, takes one look, and Stevens knows the game is up. His feeling of
authority vanishes, and he continues to walk the tightrope of identity:
a butler often mistaken for a lord, but never for long, just briefly enough
to cause a frisson of acute anxiety. The situation is familiar to the West-
ernized native: culturally displaced, he neither belongs to his own society
nor can he ever hope to attain a comfortable membership in his adopted
country as he continues to wander in an existential and cultural limbo.
Harry Smith's mistake also highlights a central contradiction in
British society that, in its most intense forms, amounts to a kind of schizo-
phrenia. Britain, like Harry Smith, has justifiably prided itself on its
democratic government and has provided the model for the rest of the
globe. Indeed, its pride in its institutions has often served as a justification
for imposing its government on alien countries. But it also happens that
England is one of the last surviving monarchies in the world. The
monarchy, retained with all its symbolic, if not its political power, serves
as the cornerstone of the class system. Its full panoply of pomp and
circumstance reinforces the chasm between the upper and lower classes.
All nuances of class-speech, manners, clothes-derive from the tone and
style of the royal family. The most obvious example is the standard
English that all English speakers aspire to, also termed the King's English.
And it is this that finally imprisons every British citizen behind the bars
of his class, no matter how free he may be legally and theoretically.
Stevens will never form an opinion of his own; he will always trust Lord
Darlington to lead him. Harry Smith's inability to distinguish a butler from
his master calls into question his political judgment, for there is always
the possibility that it will be clouded by the reflexive respect he accords
his social superiors.
At the end of his odyssey across England, Stevens recognizes, as
the result of his unsettling experiences on the road, a devastating truth:
"I trusted in his lordship's wisdom. All those years I served him, I trusted
I was doing something worthwhile. I can't even say I made my own
mistake. Really-one has to ask oneself-what dignity is there in that?"
(243). And the man who had expounded at such absurdly tedious length
on the importance of always maintaining one's dignity, of never revealing
one's emotions in public, breaks down and weeps openly before a total
stranger he meets on the pier at Weymouth. The stranger, a retiree, has
talked about enjoying the remaining years of his life, in one of those
moments of spontaneous intimacy which Stevens has experienced outside

53
the confines of DarlingtonHall and which forms a reassuringcounter-
point to the emotionalbankruptcyof his life. As they watch the sun set,
the strangerassureshim that "The evening'sthe best part of the day.
You'vedone your day'swork. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy
it" (244).Stevenspreparesto take thiswell meantadvice, as he becomes
aware,sittingon thatpier, of anothermode of being, not one of service,
but of enjoyment in the spontaneous,unselfconsciouscamaraderieof
strangers,somethingwhich he had never known untilnow.
As the sun finallysets on the Britishempire,we hope thatStevens
will replace his unquestioningloyalty to one masterwith membership
in the largerhuman community.However, old habits of mind reassert
themselvesin a new guise. His means of experiencinghuman warmth,
Stevens decides, is to learn the art of banteringwhich his new master
indulgesin andwhichhe seemsto expecthis Englishbutlerto reciprocate.
If bantering is defined as verbal game-playing, we could interpret
Stevens'decisionas a bid for freedom,at leaston a verballevel. Butalas,
Stevens'attitudeto banteringis inevitablybutlerlike-he envisagesit as
a servicehe mustperformto please his new employer:"Itoccursto me,
furthermore, that bantering is hardly an unreasonable duty for an
employer to expect a professionalto perform"(245). In other words,
Stevens will learna new trickto performfor a new master.Even as he
has acknowledgedthe waste of his life in serviceto a discreditedmaster,
he preparesto devote the rest of his life to another.As he rationalizes,
"Thehardreality,is surely,that for the likes of you and I, there is little
choice otherthanto leave ourfate, ultimately,in the handsof those great
gentlemenat the hub of this world who employ our services"(244).The
sun has indeed set for the Britishempire,but Stevenspreparesto adjust
himself to its rise on Americanshores.Caliban,it will be remembered,
sought to free himself from Prospero'styranny,only to enslavehimself
to Stephanoand Trinculo,his new masters.Insteadof cursing,Stevens
like Caliban,will learnto banter.The cruelhoax,the false consciousness,
bred in the bones of generationscaught in the vise of the class system,
will not be eradicatedby a single amountof anagnorisis.
It is a measureof Ishiguro'snovelisticgeniusthatwhile he presents
the historicalcontext of Stevens'tragedy with the delicate economy of
a sketch by Hokusai,the power of the novel resides in the precise and
powerful articulationof human feeling, which is none the less painful
for being oblivious of historicalforces. For the majorityof us who do
not play leadingroles on the world'sstage, historyis not experiencedas
"history,"but as it affects the fabricand textureof personalrelationships.
What the critic Raymond Williamssays about the great traditionof
nineteenth-centuryfiction is applicableto Remainsof the Day: "Neither
element,neitherthe society nor the individual,is thereas a priority.The
society is not a backgroundagainstwhich the personalrelationshipsare
studied,nor the individualsmerely illustrationsof aspectsof the way of
life. Every aspect of personallife is radicallyaffected by the qualityof
the general life, yet the general life is seen at its most importantin
completely personal terms"("Realismand the ContemporaryNovel"
Partisan Review XXVI 200-213).

54
 NOTES

1. Born in Nagasaki,Japan in 1954, Ishiguromoved to England in 1960 with

his parents when his father, an oceanographer,was invited to participate
in the Britishgovernment'sresearchon the North Sea. He attended British
schools and graduatedfrom the University of Kent, where he majored in
English literature.He studied creative writing at the University of East
Anglia.His firsttwo novels,A Pale View of HillsandAn Artistof the Floating
World, set in post-war Japan, won the WhitbreadBook of the Year and
Winifred Holtby prizes. The Remains of the Day, his third novel, set in
Englandin 1956,won the 1989BookerPrize.
2. LawrenceGraver,writingin The New YorkTimesBook Review (8.10.89):3
notes that, "It is remarkable,too, that as we read along in this strikingly
originalnovel, we continueto thinknot only about the old butler,but about
his country, its politics and culture."Among others who have commented
on the culturaland politicalimplicationsof the novel are:SusanneWah Lee
in the Nation (18.12.89):761.and Rhoda Koenig in New York Magazine
(16.10.89):81.
3. In his groundbreakingstudy, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of
Colonization (N. York:FrederickA. Praeger, 1964). 0. Mannonianalyzes
the dynamic between the colonizer and colonized, using the Prospero-
Caliban relationship as a paradigmatic model. Since his approach is
psychological, Mannonidoes not give sufficient weight to the economic
realities of the colonial enterprise.Thus, his stress on the supposed innate
superiority/inferiority complexes of the colonizer and colonized has
justifiablyarousedmuch controversy.A correctiveto Mannoni'sview is set
out eloquently in Frantz Fanon'sBlack Skin,White Mask (N. York:Grove
Press Inc. 1967). Fanon rightly points out that feelings of superiorityand
inferiorityare induced by the very real economic imbalances created by
colonization. Another corrective to Mannoni's views is Aime Cesaire,
Discourse on Colonialism(London:Oxford University Press, 1982). For a
recent discussionof Calibanas a symbol of the colonized native, see Alden
T. Vaughan'sessay, "Calibanin the 'Third World"':Shakespeare'sSavage
as SociopoliticalSymbol."in The MassachusettsReview, 29 (1988).
4. Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), Member of the House of
Commons, essayistand educator,was Law Member,Governmentof India
between 1837-1838,and his famous Minute on Education, reflecting the
views of Bentick and Trevelyn, was instrumentalin shaping Britisheduca-
tion in India.
5. P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975)was the authorof nearly a hundredbooks-
novels, short stories, essays, an autobiography-which were immensely
popularall over the world, but especiallyso in Britishcolonies. Mostmiddle
class Indians,for example, were broughtup on a daily diet of ArthurConan
Doyle, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, P.G. Wodehouse and Agatha
Christie. Jeeves, the paragon of a butler to the dim-witted but amiable
gentlemanabout town, BertieWooster,achieved a mythicalstatuson a par
with Conan Doyle's creation-Sherlock Holmes. Born in England, P.G.
Wodehouse spent the last three decades of his life in the USA, and wrote
about the social inequities in England with nostalgic good humor not
unmixed with clear-eyed satire. There is a curioussimilaritybetween P.G.
Wodehouse and Lord Darlingtonin their political naivete during the war.
When he was briefly a prisonerin Germany,Wodehouse,pressuredby the
Germans, made a number of broadcasts which were construed as pro-
Germanand caused a huge furorin England.For a while, P.G. Wodehouse
55
 found himself persona non grata in his own country, and this may have
contributedto his decision to spend the rest of his life in America.
6. See Albert Memmi, The Colonizerand the Colonized. Also, FrantzFanon,
The Wretchedof the Earth.
7. In Shakespeare'sHenry IV PartI, Prince Hal, who is very popular among
frequenters of the Eastcheap tavern because of his egalitarianism,
undertakesto demonstratethe illiteracyof Francis,the waiter. To this end,
he calls on Francis with various confusing orders in quick succession till
Francisis struckdumb, to the amusementof all present.Hal concludeswith,
"Thatever this fellow should have fewer words than a parrot,and yet the
son of a woman! His industryis upstairsand downstairs,his eloquence the
parcelof a reckoning"(11.IV.99.102).Hal'sinsensitivityto the consequences
of poverty is astonishingbut entirelyin keeping with the self-servingmyopia
of the rulingclasses.

WORKS CITED

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretchedof the Earth.N. York:Grove Press, 1965.

.Black Skin,White Mask.N. York:Grove Press, 1967.
Graver, Lawrence. Review of The Remains of the Day. N.Y. Times Book
Review 8.10.1989:3.
KazuoIshiguro.The Remainsof the Day. New York:Alfred Knopf, 1989.All
quotationsare from this edition and are indicatedby page numberwithin
parentheses.
Koenig,Rhoda. New YorkMagazine.16.10.1989:81.
Lee, SusanneWah. The Nation. 10.12.1989:761.
Mannoni,O. Prosperoand Caliban:The Psychologyof Colonization.N. York:
FrederickA. Praeger,1956.
Memmi,Albert.The Colonizerand the Colonized.Boston:BeaconPress,1965.
Williams,Raymond."Realismand the ContemporaryNovel" PartisanReview
XXVI:200-231.

56