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Sailing through the Mists of Memory: The Journey of a Japanese Boy
Authors: Livia-Mara SOCOLIUC
Number of views: 195
A haunting feeling of loss lingers within our souls after reading Kazuo
Ishiguro‘s works, memorable books about irreplaceable past and irretrievable
fulfilment, isolation and hopelessness, offering but a painful catharsis of
emotion and sadness. The Remains of the Day, When We Were Orphans, and
Never Let Me Go deal with ―universal themes‖, as Kazuo Ishiguro himself
declared in one of his interviews, touching the soft spots of the self, in search of
a way to deal with the sad reality check. Although Ishiguro‘s books are
deliberately set in different settings and literary genres, one can perceive a
common lingering of some sort, an elusive ―figure in the carpet‖. There will
always be an island, a journey and a belated coming back, lost identity and
forced upon oblivion. Kazuo Ishiguro left Japan for England when he was five,
which was to be a geographical and cultural rupture that he never managed to
totally surpass. He deemed himself captive in England as, for many years, his
family thought they would go back, then he became captive in his own Japan,
the imaginary one made up from second-hand memories. He finally grew to
resignedly accept his belonging to his adoptive island. The cycle captivity –
dream of deliverance – acceptance is a trait that cannot escape the
psychoanalytical mind of the contemporary reader.
This article will attempt to sail through the recurring visual and lexical
patterns which disclose the trauma that brought about the wonderful works of
the Noble Prize - winning novelist.
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