The Making And Unmaking Of The Illusions In Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains Of The Day And An Artist Of The Floating World

Kazuo Ishiguro, a famous Japanese-born British writer, wins numerous awards in and out of Britain. Previous study mainly falls on his immigrant identity and his concern for human nature. This thesis analyzes the making and unmaking of the illusions in Kazuo Ishiguro’s two novels, namely, The Remains of the Day and An Artist of the floating World, from the perspective of political ethics including Hannah Arendt’s theory of banal evil, Plato’s concept of honor as well as Louis Althusser’s view on the interpellation of state apparatus. Moreover, the unreliable narration theory is used when discussing about the relations between Ishiguro’s narrative techniques and the illusion theme in his novels. With the systematical analysis of the making and unmaking of illusions in the two novels, Kazuo Ishiguro’s profound concerns for human nature and its weakness are thoroughly displayed.The protagonists in the two novels deliberately cast a rosy hue over their professional lives in which many events are distorted and the mistakes they have committed are either whitewashed or completely "forgotten" to reshape the past to their own advantage. In fact, long before their retirement from their careers, the protagonists have already lived in illusions. The making of Stevens’s illusions illustrates Hannah Arendt’s views that the "thoughtless" ones’ total obedience to the superior’s orders generates the banal evil. Moreover, Plato’s concept of honor also explains the making of Stevens’s illusions since he ignores the public side of honor, i.e. the honor for the sake of justice, and only pursues the private side of honor, i.e. the honor for the sake of reputation and fame. The interpellation theory can be adapted to the making of Ono’s illusions. The hailing of the ideological propaganda of the state apparatus transforms individuals into subjects by finding resonance from them and in Ono’s case, his selfish desire for power quickens the interpellation and turns him into an epigone of the imperialists.The unmaking of the illusions for the protagonists is full of turns and twists. Kazuo Ishiguro uses the intertwined narration of the past illusions and the present disillusionment told by the unreliable first-person narrator to express the sufferings and pains the protagonists have experienced during the unmaking of the illusions and their ambivalent attitudes towards their illusions. The intertwined narration gives flashbacks of the past while the protagonists are continuing their present journeys, which allows them to quest for true self with the consistent comparison between the past and the present. Ishiguro’s skillful use of the two narrative techniques enables him to reveal the characters’painful struggles to awaken themselves from the old-day "glories" and it also reflects his deep insight into ordinary people’s lives. Acknowledging the undefeatable spirit that ordinary people show in times of difficulty and self-doubt, Kazuo Ishiguro leaves glimmers of hope for a new start of the protagonist’ lives after their disillusionment.