Abstract
The postwar world period was riddled with rapid changes at the different levels. Many people felt they were not able to come to terms with such ongoing changes and had to find a way to coexist with the status-quo. Postmodernism looks upon man as a social being that should learn how to adapt himself to whatever situation by whatever means available. Ishiguro’s novels are written in an expanded humanistic tradition. They are stories dealing with human relationship. They are narratives centering on the working of consciousness and the unconsciousness of the human mind. Ishiguro is concerned with reworking of the past from a late twentieth century perspective. The purpose of this study is to trace the postmodern aspects in The Remains of The Day through the life and character of Stevens and his relationships with the people that he has lived with. Stevens struggles to come to term with his present through telling stories and anecdotes of his past life. The novel depicts the role that memories can play in reconstructing the past events so that the present can be meaningful in some way from a postmodern standpoint. As a postwar British individual, the protagonist of the novel tries to practice suppression over his emotions at the personal level as well as the professional level to construct a new identity. Stevens appears torn between memories of the past and the representation of the present. He is suffering from an identity crisis and striving to create a meaningful present for himself. As a postmodern man, Stevens has to struggle at different levels. He is leading a life riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions. He can’t feel at home with the surrounding world as he is always busy trying to achieve some perfection that is not attainable in a world riddled with conflicts and struggle.
Highlights
We live in a world where everything is changing around us
Stevens struggles to come to term with his present through telling stories and anecdotes of his past life
Stevens can be seen as an example of a postmodern character who finds himself in a dilemma between the past and the present
Summary
We live in a world where everything is changing around us Such changes exist in people’s lifestyles and in their way of thinking, behavior, psychic and the way they look upon the surrounding world with its ever changing events. The modern man finds himself living a life of anxiety at a variety of levels He finds himself in a dilemma either to accept the present world or to find a way to create a world of his own. He suffers from a sense of self-fragmentation that compels him to live a distracted life of some kind He suffers from a problem with identity as he finds himself in a dilemma either to identify himself with the present or to look at the past to reconstruct it in a way that enables him to find meaning in the present. A world that is governed by a set of values and norms that constitute the moral code of his own
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