A Pale View or a Cryptic View

Abstract

ABSTRACT Narrative gaps and the ghost motif are frequently discussed in current studies of A Pale View of Hills. The two gaps revolving around Keiko’s suicide and Etsuko’s words-to-deeds discrepancy can be mapped onto Keiko’s evasive ghost and, as the paper attempts to show, Etsuko’s cryptological haunting of Keiko. The causal relationship between the absence of knowledge and the presence of haunting warrants a cryptonymic reading in line with the psychoanalytic theories of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok. Two strands linking mother and daughter retroactively emerge from Etsuko’s cryptic narrative. First, Keiko’s suicide can be viewed as an effect of her suffering from the phantom transmitted unconsciously from her mother Etsuko. Second, Etsuko’s incorporation of her lost mother in the first place begins to make sense once the critical gaze is turned from the maternal pair of Etsuko and Sachiko to Etsuko as a child and her curiously absent mother. The latter point is further supported by Ishiguro’s more general thematic concern with the orphaned adult in this and other novels. Identifying gaps in Etsuko’s knowledge of the ghost and her reticence about her mother, the paper illuminates Kazuo Ishiguro’s weighted gaps and the work of haunting in this novel.