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Posted on Fri, Jul 24, 2009 : 2:40 p.m.

What is dignity? Kazuo Ishiguro fills us in.

By Melissa LR Handa

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Thursday, July 23 at 7:30 pm, 10 members of the Ann Arbor Classics Book Group met to celebrate the works of brilliant contemporary author, Kazuo Ishiguro. While Ishiguro has a total of five books that appear on our list of 1001 (A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World, The Unconsoled, The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go), we largely focused on his two more popular works: The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go.

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The Remains of the Day (also a major motion picture, starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson) follows Stevens, a British butler through his daily routine and his memories of former daily routines in the years leading up to WWII. Stevens teaches us all about the meaning of dignity through popular anecdotes and personal encounters. One such tale is of another butler’s encounter with a tiger: “Stevens's first illustration of dignity involves a story Stevens's father used to tell about a butler who was working for his employer in India. One day, while the employer was entertaining guests in his drawing room, the butler went into the dining room and found that there was a tiger under the table. After conferring with his employer, the butler shot the animal, removed its carcass, cleaned up the dining room, and returned to calmly inform his employer, "Dinner will be served at the usual time and I am pleased to say there will be no discernible traces left of the recent occurrence by that time."” (Quotation taken from sparknotes.com)

Throughout the course of his work, Stevens is in close proximity to Miss Kenton, the housekeeper. It is obvious to the reader that these two are in love, but Stevens is never able to act on or even acknowledge these feelings. Meanwhile, his employer, Lord Darlington, holds conferences at his estate with important foreign ambassadors to help spread and promote his message of Nazi-sympathism.

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Never Let Me Go (coming to theaters in 2010)is also told through a mixture of character flashbacks and the recounting of current events. In this story, our protagonist is Kathy H, a carer and former student at Hailsham. I like to describe this tale as Harry Potter meets 1984. It follows the lives of children at boarding school- children who are off just a bit, though we are not initially quite sure of what it is that makes them different. As the story progresses, more and more details are revealed. Little by little, we learn that Kathy H and her peers are clones being harvested for organ donation. They represent a huge leap in scientific advance. The institute at which they are brought up, Hailsham, is a social experiment, liberals trying to convince the main stream that the clones are human too and deserve a proper life before making their donations and ending their personal existence (I don’t feel comfortable using life here, for all that the term implies). The alternative to Hailsham is much meeker; they would in essence be raised as cattle, not even as free range cattle, just as unimportant animals whose only purpose is to serve humanity and who are not allowed to have any other purpose beyond this. Never Let Me Go is doubtless an eerie tale. Let’s hope that it is not the next Brave New World, some of whose dystopic ideas about the future have actually come to pass.

Although these two novels are incredibly disparate in terms of style and content, the underlying themes are the same. What is dignity? Who deserves to have it? If we make someone out to be less human than ourselves, is it okay to deny them that dignity? Characters in both stories are disconnected but also impossibly accepting of their circumstances. Life is as it is to Stevens and Kathy H alike, there is no point in trying to change it. Just fulfill your purpose and move onto the next task.

Photo 1 is the author, Kazuo Ishigruo. This particular picture was taken from Japan Care for the Eldery Patron Page (www.jce.org.uk/patrons1.php).

Photo 2 is the book cover for The Remains of the Day and Photo 3 is the book cover for Never Let Me Go.

Comments

Julia Eussen

Mon, Jul 27, 2009 : 8:59 a.m.

I liked this discussion a lot. One of the other books discussed, An Artist of the Floating World, was on the surface completely different from these. An elderly Japanese man in post-WWII Japan narrates; yet once again the recurring theme of dignity is prevalent.

Melissa LR Handa

Fri, Jul 24, 2009 : 2:56 p.m.

I'm unable to go back and edit this entry, and I forgot my photo captions! Photo 1 is the author, Kazuo Ishigruo. This particular picture was taken from Japan Care for the Eldery Patron Page (www.jce.org.uk/patrons1.php). Photo 2 is the book cover for The Remains of the Day and Photo 3 is the book cover for Never Let Me Go.