The main protagonist, Stevens sets out, in the present tense, on a metaphorical expedition in “Prologue – July 1956.” Via first person singular narration he retrospectively remembers how he was planning the journey (RD 8–9). Stevens in the narrative present is planning to undertake a journey to the West of England to meet his former colleague, Miss Kenton. As he reports, he was hardly ever outside the walls of Darlington Hall, the mansion now in the possession of the American Mr Farraday. Before Mr Farraday’s time it was the house of Lord Darlington’s estate. After his present employer offers him to take leave “for as much as five or six days” (RD 3), the butler responds with genuine pride that he need not have to travel as he sees England’s greatest people within the walls of Darlington Hall. Utilizing a remarkable degree of self-quoted monologue, a narrative device never used in A Pale View of Hills and frequently used in An Artist of the Floating World, the narrator Stevens starts his narration with an eloquent and yet stereotypical biographical phrase “As you might 112
expect” (RD 4), and continues to elaborate on the subject of how he plans to start his journey. He mentions Miss Kenton and her letter – the first in some seven years – as an excuse, explaining that “professional matters” (RD 5) preoccupy his mind as he has been responsible for some minor errors in carrying out his daily routine. Here he starts building his defence plea:
As so often occurs in these situations, I had become blind to the obvious – that is, until my pondering over the implications of Miss Kenton’s letter finally opened my eyes to the simple truth: that these small errors of recent months have derived from nothing more sinister than a faulty staff plan (RD 5).
It is fair to say that by giving opportunity to a marked suspension in the narrative, this opening introduction mirrors as well as juxtaposes the last premise and in many ways, confession of Stevens on page 255:
I have tried and tried, but whatever I do I find I am far from reaching the standards I once set myself. More and more errors are appearing in my work. Quite trivial in themselves – at least so far. But they’re of the sort I would never have made before, and I know what they signify. Goodness knows, I’ve tried and tried, but it’s no use.
I’ve given what I had to give. I gave it all to Lord Darlington (RD 255).
In this narrative frame, prior to taking the six-day trip to the West of England, the protagonist arrives to the above conclusion and ponders on what to do with his remaining days. But before arriving at this conclusion he is off on his trip and this tour is going to be his crucible. At the end of his first person narration, he will explain how Lord Darlington had made his own mistakes:
At least he had the privilege of being able to say at the end of his life that he made his own mistakes. His lordship was a courageous man. He chose a certain path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at least.
As for myself, I cannot even claim that. You see, I trusted. I trusted in his lordship’s wisdom (RD 256 Emphasis original).
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Presenting a central theme of a “staff plan” (RD 5–10) and exploring this for four pages, it gives him an excuse to talk about Miss Kenton and to justify his journey to visit the former housekeeper. I put forward the idea that the “margin,”252 mentioned three times on one page, can also be interpreted as spatial time related silence, a “gap,” though it is also a semantic one: “best staff plans are those which give clear margins of error to allow for those days when an employee is ill or for one reason or another below par” (RD 9). A margin is an empty place next to the main text, it is a gap between the text and the edge of the book. In my interpretation Stevens’ life metaphorically speaking has been spent on the margins, both sociologically and mentally. Elaborating the “margins” further, a few lines down the page, the narrator justifies that the errors he has been committing are due to overwork:
I fear, however, that in my anxiety to win the support of Mrs Clements and the girls, I did not perhaps assess quite as stringently my own limitations; and although my experience and customary caution in such matters prevented my giving myself more than I could actually carry out, I was perhaps negligent over this question of allowing myself a margin (RD 9).
Stevens is short numbered in his workforce, has only three people under his command when he starts thinking about a motoring trip after receiving Miss Kenton’s letter, the first letter in seven years. Financially Stevens seems to be very dependent; he does not have money for fuel and has no proper clothing (RD 11) or it could be that his employer is happy to support him financially: “Then there was the question of what sort of costume were appropriate on such a journey, and whether or not it was worth my while to invest in a new set of clothes” (RD 11). The question might arise in how it is that in the 1950s a middle-aged man should not have an appropriate set of “travelling clothes” (RD 11) for a trip of merely six days. Following the narration it becomes clear that Stevens does have a wardrobe but it dates back to the 1930’s. On the narrator’s account – which could be interpreted as a sad list of chattel, he has a set of clothes from 1931 or 1932 supplied to him by Sir Edward Blair and a “number of splendid suits, kindly passed on to me over the
252 Interestingly, the notion of “margin” in Ishiguro’s art has been explored from a post-colonialist point of view by Vorda, A. and K. Herzinger in “Stuck on the Margins: an Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro” in Face to Face: Interviews with Contemporary Novelists, edited by Allan Vorda and Daniel Stern (Houston and Texas:
Rice University Press, 1993), 1–16. One of the monographers of Ishiguro, Chu-chueh Cheng, titled his book The Margin without Centre. Kazuo Ishiguro (Bern and New York: Peter Lang), 2010.
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years by Lord Darlington himself” (RD 11). In my interpretation the narrator’s obsession with the past finds its first argument in when he decides he is going to use a travel book from the 1930s, Mrs Jane Symons’s The Wonders of England. The narrator’s undisputed loyalty to his land is carefully contrasted by the writer, as Chu-cheh Cheng observes:
“Comparable to A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World that tease the Western misconceptions of Japan, The Remains of the Day derides Britain’s self-delusive superiority by juxtaposing its drastic decline to America’s post-war ascendance.”253 Presuming a cordial relationship with the reader or imagined audience, the narrator
“heartily” (RD 11) recommends the volumes, claiming that the German bombs might not have altered the English countryside much to make Mrs Symons’s book obsolete. There is also another reason the narrator recommends these seven volumes of trip advisory, the author was a frequent visitor to Darlington Hall during the thirties. Reading from the Devon and Cornwall volumes whenever he had an “odd moment” (RD 11) the narrator introduces another key fact: after leaving Darlington Hall Miss Kenton spent her married life in Cornwall. Looking up those volumes again, Stevens’ growing excitement strengthens him to ask his employer for days off. He carefully chooses the appropriate moment, I find this information crucial in understanding his character. Stevens is frequently interpreted as stiff or in Barry Lewis’ words “impeccable,”254 emotionally dull, though I would advance the idea that if somebody can so carefully circle around his employer as described for leave of duty, finding “the most prudent moment” (RD 13), i.e.
when his employer is in a bantering mood, this character does not lack empathy. On the contrary, he even finds himself trying to study the art of bantering that Mr Farraday is so fond of.
The notion of bantering, explored between pages 13–18, is a real crucible for the protagonist and is a threat to the clumsy, irrationally eloquent butler. To my best understanding bantering is not an obligation described in a butler’s job description. During the six pages Mr Farraday torments Stevens with his erroneously interpreted bantering. It results in Stevens’ embarrassment and in some ways, humiliation. This degrading effect occurred many times in Stevens’ career within the dynamism of servant and master.255 At the end of the novel the very last lines conclude with Stevens’ pondering over “bantering”
253 Chu-chueh Cheng, Chic Clichés: the Reinvention of Myths and Stereotypes in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Novels.
1–39. http://www.brunel.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/185864/ET53ChengEd2.pdf. (accessed 30 October 2014)
254 Barry Lewis, Kazuo Ishiguro (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 74.
255 Moral crucibles e.g. the humiliation in The Remains of the Day by Mr Farraday, see page 15 or by Mr Spencer see pages 205–206 will be later explored in this chapter.
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while concealing his abhorrence against these light hearted, humorous chit-chats so atypical of him (RD 258). He remains unsure how to respond to Mr Farraday’s harsh and insensitive, sometimes sexual remarks which Stevens’ employer claims to be bantering comments. Five times the narrator records his humiliation. One is the special “bantering”
moment when the butler brings up the topic of travel but is embarrassed when accused by Mr Farraday about the trip’s errand being a private one, to meet Miss Kenton (RD 13). The second is when he tries to deny these accusations but he is too petrified (RD 17). The third is a recollection by the narrator, in the very first days since Mr Farraday’s arrival, he asks if a wife will accompany a certain guest:
“God help us if she does come,” Mr Farraday replied. “Maybe you could keep her off our hands, Stevens. Maybe you could take her out to one of those stables around Mr Morgan’s farm. Keep her entertained in all that hay. She may be just your type”
(RD 15).
First Stevens is puzzled but does not respond. Later he records that “some residue of my bewilderment, not to say shock, remained detectable in my expression” (RD 15) and he decides “to smile in the correct manner” (RD 15) whenever he detects the mischievous tone in Mr Farraday’s voice. On the fourth occasion he tries to make up his own bantering remarks but they are so awkward that Mr Farraday cannot understand them. The fifth crucible with bantering happens when his employer urges him “all the more to respond in a like-minded spirit” (RD 18) but naturally Stevens fails: “I have not been able to think of other such witticisms quickly enough” (RD 18).
As opposed to the forlorn present, Stevens recalls how the glorious days of Darlington Hall was meant to have “fellow professionals” (RD 18) and the “finest professionals in England talking late into the night” (RD 18). “Professionalism” as the next important narrative topic for Stevens is eloquently elaborated on the text recalling the superhero valet-butler Mr Graham, Stevens expects him to visit and hopes to discuss the bantering issue but to his disappointment Mr Graham (RD 20) was not in his master’s service (as Sir James Chambers no longer had full time staff) Addressing the imagined audience the narrator asks permission to return to the original thread, the trip to the West Country. He decides to remind his master “to foot the bill for the gas” (RD 20).
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In the discussion above we have explored major narrative concepts as “margins,”
which I interpret as sociological and emotional “gaps,” the “letter” as the purpose of the trip as well as the only meta-text in the novel, the ominous shortage of staff and the “staff plan” as excuses to go and visit Miss Kenton. I have reiterated that Stevens does inhibit emotional sensitivity, “empathy” though it is restrained. Also the notion of “bantering” as a threatening but demanding device was elaborated on as well as nostalgic reminiscences to the good old days. In the above narrative part of the novel, “margins” had noticeable importance. In my interpretation Stevens’ life metaphorically speaking has been spent on the margins, sociologically, psychologically and mentally speaking, he is stuck between
“silences” and “gaps.”