PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDER AND NARRATIVE ORDER IN KAZUO ISHIGURO’S NOVELS by CHANAPA DUANGFAI A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English Literature School of English, Drama and American & Canadian Studies College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham May 2018 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. i ABSTRACT This thesis explores Kazuo Ishiguro’s six novels written in first-person narrative mode: A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World, The Remains of the Day, The Unconsoled, When We Were Orphans, and Never Let Me Go. The focus is on how Ishiguro’s narrative techniques allow him to explore the themes of psychological disorder with which his work consistently engages, which will be identified here through use of ideas drawn from Sigmund Freud and from literary studies of trauma fiction. The argument will be divided into six chapters. In each chapter, one of Ishiguro’s novels will be studied thoroughly. Distorted narrative and the technique of transference of Etsuko in A Pale View of Hills are explored in chapter I. In chapter II, the research concerns particularly how Masuji Ono, the narrator of An Artist of the Floating World, who suffers from his demand to be respected and his indecisiveness in defining the sense of respect especially as a great artist. Chapter III deals with narrative of Stevens, an English butler, in The Remains of the Day, whose problem concerning his professional achievement in its relation to the idea of id, ego and superego. Chapter IV argues that The Unconsoled engages with how the dream-like narrative technique is developed in order to reveal Ryder’s psychological problem, and how Ryder uses the dream-work mechanisms, especially displacement, to deal with his problem. Chapter V explores how When We Were Orphans works as detective fiction and how this relates to Christopher Banks’ psychological problem, and, finally, in chapter VI, I examine the particular psychological problem articulated by the clone narrator of Never Let Me Go. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Undertaking this PhD has been a truly life-changing experience for me and it cannot be completed without help and support from my supervisor. Therefore, I would like to use this opportunity to express my special appreciation and gratitude to Dr. Dave Gunning who has been a tremendous mentor for me. I would like to thank you for encouraging my research. Your aspiring guidance, invaluably constructive criticism and friendly advice during the years are praiseworthy. I would like to thank Office of the Higher Education Commission and the Royal Thai Government. This thesis would not have been accomplished without the funds and I also would like to express my appreciation to University of Phayao for allowing me to enhance my academic experiences in England for years. A special thanks to my family. Words cannot express how grateful I am to all of you. Thank you for all of the love and sacrifices that you have made on my behalf. At the end, I would also like to thank all of my friends who have incented me to strive towards my goal and supported me to live my life so much far from home. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I: ETSUKO’S DISTORTED NARRATIVES: REPRESSED MEMORY 24 AND TRANSFERENCE IN A PALE VIEW OF HILLS CHAPTER II: THE FLOATING WORLD OF MASUJI ONO IN 52 AN ARTIST OF THE FLOATING WORLD CHAPTER III: THE DECLINE OF THE ENGLISH BUTLER 84 IN THE REMAINS OF THE DAY CHAPTER IV: DREAM-WORKS IN RYDER’S NARRATIVE: 113 THE MECHANISM IN ARTICULATING AND OVERCOMING PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS CHAPTER V: THE IRRATIONAL FANTASIES: A PSYCHOLOGICAL 146 SELF-DEFENCE MECHANISM IN WHEN WE WERE ORPHANS CHAPTER VI: THE CLONES’ PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM AND 176 NARRATIVES IN NEVER LET ME GO CONCLUSION 203 BIBLIOGRAPHY 208 1 Introduction Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the most highly reputed contemporary novelists. He was named the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in literature. In the award ceremony, Professor Sara Danius delivered the presentation speech at the Stockholm Concert Hall. What is interesting about her speech is her reasons why Ishiguro should be situated on the literary map of early twentieth- century modernism. She states that Ishiguro’s works not only share some characteristics with Franz Kafka’s, but that they are also similar to the works of Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and others because these writers “have explored new literary terrain in particular human consciousness” (https://www.nobelprize.org/nobelprizes /literature /laureates/2017/presentation-speech.html). Professor Danius also adds that Ishiguro is interested in writing about different kinds of people. These people’s stories, although they are presented in their own way, “inquire into the relationship between present and past”. Normally, when we talk about the relationship between present and past, especially in the academic realm, we call it history. However, in this presentation speech, Professor Danius refuses to do so. Instead of regarding this kind of relationship as history, she calls it memory. Although Professor Danius believes that Ishiguro’s works relate closely to the idea of memory, there are critics who think in quite a different way. They regard Ishiguro as a historical novelist. Such critics focus on questions concerning Ishiguro’s interest in social and political issues, for example, in relationship to the settings in most of his novels – the way he sets the way he sets A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World against the context of Japan after the Second World War, how he develops The Remains of the Day during the decline of the British Empire after the Second World War War and how When We Were Orphans is developed against the backdrop of the second Sino-Japanese War in China. Dylan Otto Krider (1998, 2008) and Andreea Ionescu (2014) are interested in developing their arguments relating to the historical matters in Ishiguro’s novels, especially those appearing in the first two pieces of work 2 set in Japan, A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World. Even though Krider does not claim directly that Ishiguro is a historical novelist who speaks for his home country, he sets his interview about Ishiguro’s first two novels in relation to Ishiguro’s Japanese background. He focuses on Ishiguro being identified as a Japanese writer and his use of Japan during the post-Second World War period as the setting for his novel. Even though Ishiguro responds that he does not intend to write about Japan and he rationalises his standpoint by stating that he has quite limited knowledge about the economic situation and values of the people in Japan during the 1980s, his claim seems to be unattended. Ionescu discusses his works many years after this interview, and she still regards him as a Japanese voice. She argues that, especially in A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World, Ishiguro deliberately talks about Japanese issues. She claims that Ishiguro not only uses Japan as the setting, but also presents the theme of the downfall of father figures or the Japanese myth of the father of the nation and the Japanese identity crisis after the Second World War in his novels. The idea of historical issues is not only argued in its relation to Japan and Ishiguro’s Japanese background; some researchers believe that his works, especially The Remains of the Day, deal foremost with the cultural and historical situations of England. Karen Scherzinger (2004) and Motoko Sugano (2015) regard Ishiguro as a writer whose works represent Englishness. Scherzinger believes that, in The Remains of the Day, Stevens has a problem because he is caught between two worlds – the traditional English butler’s world and the new order of modernised England after the Second World War. Sugano, in a similar manner, believes that Ishiguro presents primarily the theme of historical situations and she focuses more particularly on his concentration on Englishness. However, Sugano does not limit her discussion only to The Remains of the Day as Scherzinger does. She explores the idea of Englishness in Ishiguro’s five novels –A Pale View of Hills, The Remains of the Day, The Unconsoled, When We Were Orphans and Never Let Me Go – and she identifies that these five novels are filled with English 3 elements. For example, The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go can be regarded as an exploration of the English condition; though A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World are set in Japan, the novels address some issues that are relevant to contemporary England; and The Unconsoled and When We Were Orphans have English narrators who express their concern for England, and the setting of the last two novels mentioned depict or present what Thomas Carlyle (1899) calls the condition of England – the crisis caused by the rapid social change stemming from industrialisation, working-class militancy and poverty. It cannot be denied that there are some historical elements in Ishiguro’s novels. However, this evidence is not sufficient to support the claim that Ishiguro is a historical novelist.