SparkNotes - The Remains of the Day: SparkNotes Literature Guide

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Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954; his family immigrated to England in 1960. During his childhood in England, Ishiguro always thought his family would someday return to Japan, though they never did. When the family left Japan, his close relationship with his grandfather was abruptly severed. His grandfather's absence especially affected Ishiguro because his grandfather died a few years later.

Ishiguro was schooled to the University of Kent at Canterbury and the University of East Anglia. After graduating, his rise to fame was amazingly rapid. His first novel, A Pale View of Hills (1982) won the Winifred Holtby Prize from the Royal Society of Literature. The novel discusses the postwar memories of Etsuko, a Japanese woman trying to deal with the suicide of her daughter Keiko. His second novel, An Artist of the Floating World (1986), won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 1986 and was short-listed for the Booker Prize. This story chronicles the life of an elderly man named Masuji Ono, who looks back over his career as a political artist of Japanese imperialist propaganda. The Remains of the Day (1988), Ishiguro's third novel, won him the Booker Prize. In 1993 it was adapted into a highly successful and acclaimed film starring Anthony Hopkins as Stevens and Emma Thompson as Miss Kenton.

The Remains of the Day is commonly branded a post-imperialist work, as its protagonist harbors nostalgia for the English way of life before World War II, when Britain still held colonies all over the world. However, this fact is merely tangential to the novel, which is primarily a story of humannot politicalregret. Furthermore, though many of Ishiguro's works are branded as post-colonial novels, The Remains of the Day again does not fit into this classification: Ishiguro's Japanese heritage is not relevant to the plot nor to the narrative.

Indeed, the body of Ishiguro's work defies simplistic classification. Even in his other post-war narratives set in Japan, his own heritage is much less important than the larger human concerns that the novels raise. This characteristic is, perhaps, reflective of the fact that Ishiguro felt himself neither English nor Japanese. His constructions of each society are those of one who felt himself an outsider in some sense. Each of Ishiguro's novels describe an individual's memories of how his or her personal life was changed by the Second World War, and the regret and sorrow that reminiscences have the power to awaken.

Among his primary influences, Ishiguro cites Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Kafka. He also admires the Czech exile writer Milan Kundera, the Irish exile writer Samuel Beckett, and the American exile writer Henry James. Though Ishiguro never referred to himself as an "exile," this theme of exile or expatriation plays a role in many of his works.

The Remains of the Day is told in the first-person narration of an English butler named Stevens. In July 1956, Stevens decides to take a six- day road trip to the West Country of Englanda region to the west of Darlington Hall, the house in which Stevens resides and has worked as a butler for thirty-four years. Though the house was previously owned by the now-deceased Lord Darlington, by 1956, it has come under the ownership of Mr. Farraday, an American gentleman. Stevens likes Mr. Farraday, but fails to interact well with him socially: Stevens is a circumspect, serious person and is not comfortable joking around in the manner Mr. Farraday prefers. Stevens terms this skill of casual conversation "bantering"; several times throughout the novel Stevens proclaims his desire to improve his bantering skill so that he can better please his current employer.

The purpose of Stevens's road trip is to visit Miss Kenton, the former housekeeper of Darlington Hall who left twenty years earlier to get married. Stevens has received a letter from Miss Kenton, and believes that her letter hints that her marriage is failing and that she might like to return to her post as housekeeper. Ever since World War II has ended, it has been difficult to find enough people to staff large manor houses such as Darlington Hall.

Much of the narrative is comprised of Stevens's memories of his work as a butler during and just after World War II. He describes the large, elaborate dinner parties and elegant, prominent personages who come to dine and stay at Darlington Hall in those times. It is gradually revealedlargely through other characters' interactions with Stevens, rather than his own admissionsthat Lord Darlington, due to his mistaken impression of the German agenda prior to World War II, sympathized with the Nazis. Darlington even arranged and hosted dinner parties between the German and British heads of state to help both sides come to a peaceful understanding. Stevens always maintains that Lord Darlington was a perfect gentleman, and that it is a shame his reputation has been soiled simply because he misunderstood the Nazis' true aims.

During the trip Stevens also recounts stories of his contemporariesbutlers in other houses with whom he struck up friendships. Stevens's most notable relationship by far, however, is his long-term working relationship with Miss Kenton. Though Stevens never says so outright, it appears that he harbors repressed romantic feelings for Miss Kenton. Despite the fact that the two frequently disagree over various household affairs when they work together, the disagreements are childish in nature and mainly serve to illustrate the fact that the two care for each other. At the end of the novel, Miss Kenton admits to Stevens that her life may have turned out better if she had married him. After hearing these words, Stevens is extremely upset. However, he does not tell Miss Kentonwhose married name is Mrs. Bennhow he feels. Stevens and Miss Kenton part, and Stevens returns to Darlington Hall, his only new resolve being to perfect the art of bantering to please his new employer.

As Salman Rushdie comments, The Remains of the Day is "a story both beautiful and cruel." It is a story primarily about regret: throughout his life, Stevens puts his absolute trust and devotion in a man who makes drastic mistakes. In the totality of his professional commitment, Stevens fails to pursue the one woman with whom he could have had a fulfilling and loving relationship. His prim mask of formality cuts him off from intimacy, companionship, and understanding.

Stevens - The protagonist and narrator of The Remains of the Day. Stevens is the epitome of perfect English butler. He is meticulous and proper in everything he does, and his manner of speaking is always formal and refined.

Miss Kenton - The head housekeeper of Darlington Hall until just before World War II. Miss Kenton, like Stevens, excels at her job, but she is less formal and more personable than Stevens. She and Stevens often bicker about household affairs.