Global Education & Social Sciences Journal Vol. I, No. 2 (June 2021) Page 13 ______

Psycho-Linguistic Modelling in ’s Novels Amalia Călinescu, Ph.D.

University of Bucharest, Romania Email: [email protected]

Abstract Most theories and models use different names for the same existential tenets, which may prove confusing, since the ultimate purpose of all studies is to help people heal their traumas and make inspired decisions for the betterment of their lives. Kazuo Ishiguro, meanwhile, proposes an internal shift of behavioral modelling, given the intricacy of human interrelations as well as the difficulty of altering one’s environment. All Ishigurian characters epitomize the hidden powers of the human mind and heart while the power of their language can influence readers’ emotional system, which underlies the decision-making process. The current study proposes a psycho- linguistic synthesis of Ishiguro’s novels as a way to gain better knowledge about how to apply fiction to real life, as well as prove that good fiction can influence readers’ perceptions, wants, needs, choices and decisions, and, by implication, their whole life, and, by extension, the wellbeing of their families, groups, communities and nations. By creating more effective literacy nudges and incentives, most public, private and non-profit institutions and organizations with cognitive-behavioral, psychotherapeutic, integrative, sociological, neuroscientific and didactic profiles can help people relate works of fiction to real life for individual and collective improvement. The collaboration of these institutions and organizations for the optimization of their functioning strategies can lead to significant improvement of their performance, which, in turn, leads to a major increase in people’s reading interests and, ultimately, to readers’ long-term health and wellbeing owing to the power of all good fiction to speak to readers’ thoughts and emotions. Keywords: Kazuo Ishiguro, linguistic modelling, psycho-literature

Introduction The object of every academic and research field is, in the end, human behaviour. Knowing information does not help much in changing certain behavioural patterns. Researchers have found that in order to alter behaviour they should first change the environment. By reducing friction, people get motivated to realign desired behaviour with an easy pattern of doing things, because small things do matter. The second important thing in making a difference is seeing the bigger picture, which is not always easy, if not impossible (Ariely, 2008). All living creatures, humans included, can act only indirectly on their surroundings

Global Education & Social Sciences Journal Vol. I, No. 2 (June 2021) Page 14 ______and can only interact with their environment through their worldview, which, in turn, determines their daily mode of operation and shapes their experiences: “A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness” (Korzybski, 1958, p. 60). Much earlier, Immanuel Kant and David Hume showed the relation between perception, imagination and understanding, stating that it is not what humans think that matters, but how they think, therefore they can only see the world according to their personal instruments (Baier, 1993). If perception is limited, then reality is hidden in plain sight, because one cannot really see it as it is. Jean Piaget demonstrated that children could see the world differently, which further proves that humans normally see things that are already familiar to them while they cannot see the ones they do not know (Simatwa, 2010). The grain of reality is then enhanced by imagination so that all knowledge comes from something previously imagined then put into proper words. Although words evoke experiences, they are only creating illusions of reality, forcing humans to take anything as true through the naturalising phenomenon. The only salvation would be to detach oneself from the mentality of the crowd in order to get closer to the true objectivity of reality: “Truth always rests with the minority […] because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion” (Kierkegaard, 1960, p. 128). Linguistic Unification There are too many unknowns in the never-ending equation of life, yet it does not matter whether or not something is real as long it feels real to a person, group, community, or a whole nation, for that matter. There is no unanimously approved key decoder of the mind, neither in reality nor in fiction, yet studies can be done on literary works to prove their therapeutic potential. Writers imagine and create. The editing process is, meanwhile, lateralised to the left hemisphere of the brain in most right-handed people, as are critical skills. Integrative critics can thus extract the existential meaning of writers’ works, of which writers may not always be aware, since the creation process is mostly spontaneous and right- lateralised in most right-handers, stemming as it does from the depths of the subconscious mind (Corballis, 2014). The conscious cooperation of the two brain hemispheres can thus lead to the cooperation between writers and critics for the true benefit of readers: Interdisciplinary critics can find the hidden messages of good fiction and share them with the readers to help the latter decode their favourite books in an existential way. This integrative objective may lead to the simplification of critical language to a level of unanimous understanding, given the cooperation of all fields of specialisation for the betterment of life. In other words, in the near future, there may emerge a common jargon to denote the same concepts in all fields of interest, in which case memorising the different terminologies for the same sets of concepts (which can otherwise be googled) will become secondary to making constructive and critical connections. Thus, the best way to anchor any type of information is to link it to real life. Using the intellectual plane as a tool for intelligence, imagination and creativity will help people find their inner and outer freedom. Instead of rejecting what they do not see or

Global Education & Social Sciences Journal Vol. I, No. 2 (June 2021) Page 15 ______understand, they will be able to embrace, once and for all, the happy insignificance of their physicality in a Universe so big that no human mind can ever comprise its infinite dimensions in limited words, regardless of language or race. If humans keep the bigger picture in mind, they will direct their research only into meaningful directions, in accordance with the healthy requests of all present generations, and the ones to come. Should all school subjects serve life, students will feel really interested and will retain everything naturally: “By instructing students how to learn, unlearn and relearn, a powerful new dimension can be added to education. […] Tomorrow's illiterate will not be the man who can't read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn” (Alvin Toffler cited in Ratcliffe, 2011, p. 381). Thus, “the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn” (Sarah J. Ratcliffe cited in Wang & Gut, 2011, p. 1). The linguistic form of information should therefore very much depend on one’s individuality so that no one should be forced to convey knowledge in its initial state as long as the meaning stays the same. This may be the only way of preserving the freedom of expression while learning new things. Kazuo Ishiguro: Psycho-literary overview Born in Nagasaki, Japan, on 8 November 1954, the Nobel-prize-winning writer Kazuo Ishiguro came to live in Britain at the age of 5, when his father accepted a job as a researcher at the National Institute of Oceanography. After attending a grammar school for boys in Surrey, Ishiguro read English and Philosophy at the University of Kent, Canterbury, then followed a master’s programme in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia (Hunnewell, 2008). The influence of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (1982) is a proof of Ishiguro’s conscious attraction towards non-chronological order of the scenes, non-linear plot and tangential thought associations and drifting memories, like abstract paintings with many layers of self-deception. Obsessed with the past, the English author of Japanese origins wants to write cathartic fiction that crosses boundaries and cultures, having his readers wonder when it is better to remember and when to move on. His creative process is thus mainly concerned with nostalgia and melancholy, not “anger or violence.” Although he does not regret “not having grown up in Japan”, he cannot ignore the “strong emotional relationships [he] had in Japan that were suddenly severed at a formative emotional age, particularly with [his] grandfather” (Jaggi, 1995, pp. 20-21). Ishiguro feels the duty to pass on the memories of his parents’ generation, filled with individuals struggling between remembering and forgetting. It is difficult to decide whether a nation remembers and forgets in the same way an individual does or how exactly the memories of a nation are shaped and controlled. Forgetting is the only way to stop cycles of violence yet it is debatable if strong nations can be rebuilt on wilful amnesia and frustrated justice. Like E. M. Forster (McDowell, 1966), Ishiguro is aware that characters should be three-dimensional, able to surprise the reader convincingly, while their stories should contain relationships that matter to them, amuse or surprise them, with epiphanic moments that emphasise the small and the private. From his perspective, stories should communicate feelings with which the reader can easily identify – stories about love, revenge, memory loss, misplaced allegiance, recurring things that repeat throughout history: “I ask myself: What is an interesting relationship? Is the relationship a journey? Is

Global Education & Social Sciences Journal Vol. I, No. 2 (June 2021) Page 16 ______it standard, cliché, or something deeper, more subtle, more surprising? People talk about flat versus three-dimensional characters; you can talk about relationships the same way” (Lee, 2014). In the samurai tales, the supernatural and the real coexist, as do in Homerian stories. Ishiguro also feels free to create a quasi-historical King Arthur and place him in the gap between the Roman retreat and Anglo-Saxon definitive settlement (, 2015). In this way, he can create a story about forgetting and remembering for the cohesion of a blended nation in a prescientific time in which superstitions and fantastic characters like ogres and pixies are harbingers of evil and illness. Typical love stories depict the act of courtship, with the story ending when people come together while long relationships single out what really matters and what has to be done when time is limited. A realistic love story, like Axl and Beatrice’s, illustrates the many years spent together while trying to keep the flame burning. Such couples do not fear death, only separation – if they stay together, they can face anything (Kirtley, 2015). Although he does not write in the biographical mode, Ishiguro knows how to celebrate the decency of ordinary people, therefore his characters find it rather difficult to give themselves to other people. They may be defensive to the point of not being human, obsessed with control and restraint. What they can say requires an odd way of saying it, like long anxiety dreams. Ishiguro is not afraid to speak about the dangers of becoming emotionally engaged or about the fear of emotions. In a political or moral way, most of people are butlers, doing regular jobs, not running countries or multinational corporations. The really rich things in life come from relationships, although people are scared of being hurt, so they fall prey to self-denial and emotional repression. They may change their ideas of dignity along the way and break down to total strangers when they do not have time to make their own mistakes (, 1989). Ishiguro does not think that people remember in moving images so he works around still images as he writes through memory as a fiction device. His characters indirectly speak about their pleasurable pains, repeating the same frustrations and putting their efforts in the wrong place, creating a sad image of their lost opportunities in a manual called How to Waste Your Life (Kahan, 2019). People unconsciously try to justify to themselves the kind of life they have led. There is an urge in people to do something great, of moral value in their eyes, that will distinguish them and give their existence some kind of dignity, yet, when they try to do it, they discover that they are too ordinary to transcend the mediocre. On the one hand, they want to leave their mark; on the other, they have to come to terms with the fact that they do not have it in themselves. So, they have to re-evaluate their lives in the light of the judgment that is passed on them when they are told that the things they were proud of they should then be ashamed of (Rose, 2017). Since the human body is not designed to last long, it is only natural for humans to try to push this knowledge at the back of their minds. However, the only solution is for them to embrace their fate, given that something hard may be more comforting than something unknown. As a result, Ishiguro is interested either in writing about unreliable or crazy narrators going more or less through a real world or in mapping out the inside of people’s consciousness and how the outside world bends to their emotional logic. He thus wants to pay respect to that part in all people from where irrational motives and decisions

Global Education & Social Sciences Journal Vol. I, No. 2 (June 2021) Page 17 ______come, the part that knows that the more positive one is about human relations, the more sadly they will end or with no closure at all. In real life, people usually accept miserable fates with no happy endings as they struggle to see beyond their small worlds. Ordinary people break up under the pressure of life. While individuals’ small worlds are swallowed up whole by the bigger worlds of the groups, communities, societies and nations, there is the reality of Carl Sagan’s “pale blue dot” that renders all human endeavour meaningless unless it is aligned with the cosmic purpose of life and energy: “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives” (Sagan, 2011, pp. 73-74). His overt doubts about human knowledge, in the form of opinions, principles and faculties, makes Ishiguro an indirect heir of David Hume’s sceptic legacy, fuelled by the Socratic know-nothing approach to life (Ainslie, 2003, pp. 133-154). While Descartes envisioned reason as the only pathway to true knowledge (Loeb, 1990, pp.3-43), Hume believed that extreme reason could only lead to madness whereas passion could help achieve realistic and sustainable morality and altruism. Thus, whereas the deductive aspect of logical reasoning proves that truth can be reached by mere reason, the inductive method can only prove the uncertainty of knowledge gathered through experience, since previous experiences and memories can lead only to probable conclusions. Inductive reasoning is thus based on empirical observations, not certain facts, which lead to inductive predictions about causal relationship of events. Ishiguro’s subtle message to his readership is that humans should all accept inductive reasoning in order to stay humble and avoid judging, as Hume overtly expresses throughout A Treatise of Human Nature (2003). Both Ishiguro and Hume state that humans are more influenced by their feelings than by their reasoning and therefore they could be better if they embraced, instead of denying, their emotional nature. Whether admitted it or not, reason comes second in importance in the process of conviction forming, so it is important for humans to have their emotions educated in order to make peace with the external world as well as themselves. All in all, Ishiguro wants to convey emotions, not intellectual ideas, although he eventually does both: “I used to think in terms of characters, how to develop their eccentricities and quirks. Then I realised that it’s better to focus on the relationships instead, and then the characters develop naturally […] Relationships have to be natural, to be authentic human drama. I’m a little suspicious of stories that have an intellectual theme bolted on, when the characters stop and debate before they carry on” (Lee, 2014). The main Ishigurian message is therefore that all people should share their emotions with their peers as they go through both their small worlds and the big world around. In the end, it is relationships that best reflect human life. Ishigurian language There are many theories and models that merely use different names for the same elements that underlie human life. This will most often be regarded as confusing, since the ultimate purpose of all studies is to help people heal their traumas and make more inspired decisions for the betterment of their lives. Kazuo Ishiguro, meanwhile, proposes a different method of changing behaviour – from the inside – since the environment is

Global Education & Social Sciences Journal Vol. I, No. 2 (June 2021) Page 18 ______hard, if not impossible, to manipulate due to the intricacy of human interrelations. All Ishigurian characters epitomise the hidden powers of the human mind and heart, since their language can perform miracles on the structure of readers’ thoughts and feelings, which constitute the core of the decision-making process. Through perception, the human psyche has the power to create an inner world so powerful that reality comes second in importance if it does not coincide in meaning with a person’s beliefs and emotional logic: The organised activity of the logical function draws into itself all the sensations and constructs an inner world of its own, which progressively departs from reality but yet at certain points still retains so intimate a connection with it that transitions from one to the other continually take place and we hardly notice that we are acting on a double stage – our own inner world (which, of course, we objectify as the world of sense-perception) and also an entirely different and external world. (Vaihinger, 2008, p. 160) Ishiguro does not have a sense of fidelity towards history. He first makes things up then does some research to see if he has not gone outrageously wrong. By instinct, he is not terribly fond of things like plot, since he finds it very restrictive. He does not consciously think about language, he just does things his way, creating worlds off-kilter from the real ones using double-cross metaphors, which identify one connotative image with another. He just feels obliged to follow something inside himself, not what is expected of him: “I want to write the kind of books people all around the world can relate to. It’s as simple as that” (Gaiman, 2015). An interdisciplinary perspective on the language of Ishiguro’s characters can thus help readers change their lives for the better. Like the creative process, reading involves both brain hemispheres (Corballis, 2014): (1) the sheer joy of reading books for pleasure (emotional process => right hemisphere); (2) the conscious search for deep meaning in favourite books (inspired analysis => left hemisphere). The scene about the wrong Chinaman in The Remains of the Day (1989) is the perfect example of the strong impact a well-formed image can have on the reader when the surface and deep levels of language work together in perfect harmony. The dark humour of the scene alludes to the entropy of systems, regardless of their size. A more accurate description of the second law of thermodynamics is the progression of all processes from order to disorder or from heat to cold (Martell, 1946, p. 166). Although entropy can never be erased from the genetics of the Universe, chaos may lead to reorder if the human psyche decides so. The little Asian intruder may not necessarily have political connotations in the nationality paradigm, yet it has the rippling effect of a stone, little though it is, thrown on the surface of the stillest water. Small worlds can be shattered to pieces when an alien element interrupts their peaceful order, however artificial it may be: “The fact is, Mr Stevens, all the Chinamen in this house have been dirty for some time! And now, they are in incorrect positions!” “Miss Kenton, you are being quite ridiculous. Now if you will be so good as to let me pass.” “Mr Stevens, will you kindly look at the Chinaman behind you?” “If it is so important to you, Miss Kenton, I will allow that the Chinaman behind me

Global Education & Social Sciences Journal Vol. I, No. 2 (June 2021) Page 19 ______may well be incorrectly situated. But I must say I am at some loss as to why you should be so concerned with these most trivial of errors.” “These errors may be trivial in themselves, Mr Stevens, but you must yourself realise their larger significance.” (pp. 61-62) The butterfly effect, according to which small choices and decisions can invariably have larger effects (Dooley, 2009), is overtly expressed in the last line of the conversation between Mr Stevens and Miss Kenton, and immediately reiterated by allotting the same message to his employer, thus signalling the ramifications of political mistakes: “In fact, now that I come to think of it, I have a feeling it may have been Lord Darlington himself who made that particular remark to me that time he called me into his study some two months after that exchange with Miss Kenton outside the billiard room. By that time, the situation as regards my father had changed significantly following his fall”. (p. 63) In the same vein, the fierce intrusion of American culture into the mentality about the Japanese legends of great warriors like samurai and ninja is portrayed in simple dialogue lines heavy with Americanisation in An Artist of the Floating World (1989): “Very impressive, Ichiro. But tell me, who were you pretending to be?” “You guess, Oji.” “Hmm. Lord Yoshitsune perhaps? No? A samurai warrior, then? Hmm. Or a ninja perhaps? The Ninja of the Wind.” “Oji's completely on the wrong scent.” “Then tell me. Who were you?” “Lone Ranger!” “What?” “Lone Ranger! Hi yo Silver!” “Lone Ranger? Is that a cowboy?” “Hi yo Silver!” Ichiro began to gallop again, and this time made a neighing noise. (p. 30) According to Aldous Huxley (1954), languages are a curse and a blessing at once, if and when human beings forget that the psyche is just an instrument of reducing the universal mind to an accessible proportion of understanding from a physical point of view. If, instead of communicating and exchanging experiences, humans use languages to hail the intellect as the only wisdom known to man, they will mistake words for experiences and reality for data: “Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born – the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated record of other people's experience, the victim insofar as it confirms in him the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness, and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for I data, his words for actual things” (p. 23). Filtering out the world through the multifarious canons of the language systems is what makes human experience susceptible of either genuineness or inauthenticity. One can thus acknowledge, beyond any reasonable doubt, the linguistic dangers of robbing oneself of the experience of living for the sake of speaking about it. The cognitive trade-off

Global Education & Social Sciences Journal Vol. I, No. 2 (June 2021) Page 20 ______hypothesis explains the big difference between chimps’ as yet unequalled short-term memory capacities and humans’ much poorer abilities of the same sort. According to the primatologist Tetsuro Matsuzawa (2010), during its evolution, the human species seems to have facilitated a trade-off between the development of language speaking and enhancement of short-term memory. In other words, evolutionarily speaking, humans have chosen language over incredible memorising capacities, so they should do better not to waste their linguistic assets on false values. The more one is conscious of something, the less properly it fits. When one is happy, one does not know it. No one will speak about someone else’s conduct unless the latter is doing something wrong. Similarly, talking about enlightenment attests the failure of its attainment, since talking about things, big and small, will always stand in the way of their happening. Thus, the reason Ishiguro’s characters seem to be unable to stop their suffering, even though they know its cause, is directly linked to their impossibility to transcend their own models of the world. Rebirth is a common theme in mythology and seems to be underlying human suffering as Ishiguro sees it. After acute or chronic suffering, the depths of despair can lead to the reaffirmation of life and the sacrifice of breaking bad habits to either psychological rebirth or breakdown. Human behaviour can therefore be fully understood only in connection to the model that generated it. People’s choices and decisions are always the best that can be possibly made within the confines of people’s worldviews. The larger the perceptual system, the better the decision process. However, “the processes which allow us to accomplish the most extraordinary and unique human activities are the same processes which block our further growth if we commit the error of mistaking the model for the reality. We can identify three general mechanisms by which we do this: Generalisation, Deletion, and Distortion” (Bandler & Grinder, 1976, p. 78). Accordingly, the language Ishiguro’s characters use is based on their worldviews and perceptions. The author creates both their worlds and the linguistic models of their worlds, based, in turn, on the unanimously used model of Generalisation, Deletion and Distortion. In (1990), Ogata-san’s discourse on the Americanisation process in a former imperialistic Japan represents an unhealthy example of Generalisation. His imagology stems from his wistful image of traditional Japanese values within a period that has been gentle to him in particular, despite the atrocities created nationally and globally. Evaluated in its context, Ogata-San’s argument against Americans gives the reader a proper key to understanding the teacher’s behaviour, however inappropriate it might seem on the backdrop of expressed dissensions between old and young generations: The Americans, they never understood the way things were in Japan. Not for one moment have they understood. Their ways may be fine for Americans, but in Japan things are different, very different.” Ogata-San sighed again. “Discipline, loyalty, such things held Japan together once. That may sound fanciful, but it’s true. People were bound by a sense of duly. Towards one’s family, towards superiors, towards the country. But now instead there’s all this talk of democracy. You hear it whenever people want to be selfish, whenever they want to forget obligations. (p. 65) On the other hand, Niki elicits a healthy form of Generalisation when she lectures Etsuko on her obsession with old age, pointing out how important the actual act of living is in making sense of one’s life: “It doesn’t matter how old someone is, it’s what they’ve

Global Education & Social Sciences Journal Vol. I, No. 2 (June 2021) Page 21 ______experienced that counts. People can get to be a hundred and not experience a thing” (p. 89). In An Artist of the Floating World (1989), Ono’s mother tries to teach her son how to correctly Delete unimportant perceptions from his worldview at a young age. Only by selectively focusing on certain concepts or aspects of living while excluding others can a person learn to expand their perspectives and to appreciate life as it is: “When you are young, there are many things which appear dull and lifeless. But as you get older, you will find these are the very things that are most important to you” (p. 48). By reducing his fellow artist called Tortoise to an inaccurate comparison, Ono Deletes the possibility of expanding his beliefs and character assessment to a non-judgemental dimension. In this way, he indeed reduces his surroundings to dimensions easy to handle yet, by the same token, he will see the world as a cold, unwelcoming place once the history changes the collective models of interpretation: “I suppose I do not on the whole greatly admire the ‘Tortoises’ of this world. While one may appreciate their plodding steadiness and ability to survive, one suspects their lack of frankness, their capacity for treachery. And I suppose, in the end, one despises their unwillingness to take chances in the name of ambition or for the sake of a principle they claim to believe in” (p. 159). In The Remains of the Day (1989), the butler Stevens uses the modelling process of Distortion in order to make sense of his inability to display emotions while going through life. It is his only way to survive – by not accepting that he had a choice; that his life was his and his alone to handle in the direction of his thoughts and feelings: What is the point of worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one's life took? Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy. And if some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, surely that in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment. (p. 244) Living in a dream of either nocturnal or diurnal nature, the pianist Ryder has, in (2013), all sorts of Distortions during his stay in the unnamed European city. Unlike Stevens, however, he experiences them all with healing authenticity, because he is not afraid to show his weaknesses and quirks and analyse them with unnerving objectivity: Left alone, I must quickly have drifted off into my own thoughts, for I did not notice the barman return. He must have done so, however, for I was soon drinking coffee, staring at the mirrored wall behind the bar – in which I could see not only my own reflection but much of the room behind me. After a while, for some reason, I found myself replaying in my head key moments from a football match I had attended many years earlier – an encounter between Germany and Holland. (p. 256) In When We Were Orphans (2001), the detective Christopher Banks consciously believes that orphans share the same fate, of trying to find their parents. At a deeper level, his Generalisations distort the image of a good life a parentless child could have as an adult, irrespective of their misfortunes during childhood. In other words, his subconscious conditions him to wear the stigmata of a tiring search for answers to unanswerable questions: “Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by

Global Education & Social Sciences Journal Vol. I, No. 2 (June 2021) Page 22 ______such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm” (p. 382). Death from a young person’s perspective, like Kathy’s, stresses out what really matters in the universal scheme of things (, 2010). This is not Ishiguro’s morbid fascination with mortality. On the contrary, it indicates the optimism of living against a sad fate and not wanting vengeance but to forgive. Kathy uses linguistic Deletion to indicate the inevitability of taking in the extension of clones’ fate. When one’s image of oneself no longer coincides, if it ever did, with others’, the abyss thus created is the sad reminder of a futureless life with shattered hopes and dreams: […] there are people out there, like Madame, who don't hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you – of how you were brought into this world and why – and who dread the idea of your hand brushing against theirs. The first time you glimpse yourself through the eyes of a person like that, it's a cold moment. It's like walking past a mirror you've walked past every day of your life, and suddenly it shows you something else, something troubling and strange. (p. 215) In The Buried Giant (2015), the characters’ good intentions are counteracted by unfortunate times, leading to misplaced energies and values, depending on who can control the memory bank of societies. When peace is not unanimously consented but imposed or enforced by military victory, resentment becomes frozen, threatening to resurface at any time. The Saxon Wistan thus chastises Father Jonus for glorifying the boundless mercy of their Christian god. His linguistic Deletion narrows down the example of greedy Christians who, knowing that they can be forgiven regardless, will pursue their inhumane deeds to satisfy their earthly lust for power and riches. His rhetorical narrative oozes pain in the face of the unalterable realities that make wars and prevent nations from living in peace with each other: What use is a god with boundless mercy, sir? You mock me as a pagan, yet the gods of my ancestors pronounce clearly their ways and punish severely when we break their laws. Your Christian god of mercy gives men licence to pursue their greed, their lust for land and blood, knowing a few prayers and a little penance will bring forgiveness and blessing. (p. 245) According to The Economist (2005), though “thought-provoking, […] Ishiguro’s style outweighs the substance.” The “taut, emotionless sentences” […] feel almost contrived; the language adds much to the book’s sense of unreality, but also makes it hard to care much about the characters.” In a similar vein, Philip Hensher (2005) feels totally unimpressed by Ishiguro’s linguistic rigidity employed to create a stark, yet not vulgar, contrast with the emotional topic of organ donation, so much so that he could not have cared less about the protagonists’ tragic fate: “the situation is totally implausible on every level. […] I believed so little in any of the people, their situation, or the way they spoke that I didn’t really care what happened to them. […] Ishiguro […] looks increasingly like one at the mercy of his limited linguistic inventiveness” (p.32). On the other hand,

Global Education & Social Sciences Journal Vol. I, No. 2 (June 2021) Page 23 ______Andrew Barrow (2005) considers Ishiguro “a poet” who disregards “accuracy of social observation, dialogue and even characterisation. […] he simply uses a science-fiction framework to throw light on ordinary human life, the human soul, human sexuality, love, creativity and childhood innocence. He does so with devastating effect.” Likewise, Caroline Moore (2005) deems the author’s elliptical yet masterly bilingualism responsible for the “evocation of a pervasive menace and despair almost but not quite lost in translation – made up of the shadows of things not said, glimpsed out of the corner of one’s eye.” Regardless of critics’ perception, writing in a controlled and dignified manner about turbulent realities in the inner and outer realms of existence is by far what sets Ishiguro’s novels “echoing around the brain for days afterwards” (Tait, 2005) as well as his Nobel- prize-winning signature.

Conclusion Technological advances, backed up by a collective, memory-based intellect that is growing sharper and sharper, are providing the best living conditions ever for the majority of human population. Through their senses, people store environmental data within their memory base in order to ensure self-preservation. Yet nature has also endowed humans with free will and intuition in order to help them enjoy life and take inspired decisions, knowing that survival is not the endgame for their advanced species. However, “the most pervasive paradox of the human condition […] is that the processes which allow us to survive, grow, change and experience joy are the same processes which allow us to maintain an impoverished model of the world – our ability to manipulate symbols, that is, to create models” (Bandler & Grinder, 1976, p. 78). Liking what one reads is a subconscious process while applying what one has liked read to one’s life is a conscious act. The pleasure of reading fiction, doubled by the existential utility extracted from fiction, can lead to enduring changes in humans’ perceptions and beliefs, which are then reflected in their choices, decisions and actions. Good literature can thus help humans feel, think, speak and do right for their type, and herein lies human harmony. People invariably hold in their hearts, especially when they are children, a better, less realistic picture of the world, so their recurrent story is about how love and friendship fit into their lives, particularly when they start to realise that life is short and that mortality is a fact. Being well aware that human existence is limited, Ishiguro is fascinated by the extent to which people do not walk or run away and how much they accept what fate has given them. Sometimes it is just passivity; at other times, people simply lack the perspective of running away because they unconsciously know that there is no escape. The fear of emotions seems to prevail in every culture. The human story may seem sad, but there is also something affirming in the fact that people fade away and die. The Ishigurian message is to do the things that matter as one has the chance, because one never knows how much time one has left and the opportunity may slip through one’s hands. For all intents and purposes, life is a struggle in all its complexity (Krasny, 2015). Ishiguro expresses himself through his novels as wholes, not through single characters. He is trying to connect with people through feelings. He considers himself neither a historian nor an essayist; he just knows that people need both facts and feelings

Global Education & Social Sciences Journal Vol. I, No. 2 (June 2021) Page 24 ______in order to relate to each other and make sustainable decisions. People retreating into ethic nationalism find it more difficult to unite when living in a borderless world should be the ultimate goal. Living in small and big worlds at the same time, they cannot forget either one. Read in a holistic way, Ishigurian novels can thus help readers see that all humans carry a spark of divine light within themselves. Ishiguro’s protagonists are all anti-heroes and anti-heroines, in the end. Their courage and morality are questionable, no matter how noble they seem to make the fabric of their small worlds. Their neurolinguistics taps into the systemic structure of human modelling to make readers aware of the author’s own worldview, through digression, flashback and flash-forward processing: It does not matter how rational humans are in making their decisions within the frame of a particular historical period – the collective wave will always dictate the morality of their deeds. Yet this is what makes humans still rise, despite the inhumane rules of conformity: “You may shoot me with your words,/You may cut me with your eyes,/You may kill me with your hatefulness,/But still, like air, I’ll rise” (Angelou, 2011, p. 4). We are all the children of the Universe and therefore created from what the whole Universe is made of: energy. The only enduring guide that can transgress the historical trends and their ethics is the emotional logic of the open heart.

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