A Study Of The Trauma Of Keiko In A Pale View Of Hills

A Pale View of Hills was published as Kazuo Ishiguro’s maiden work in 1982 and has won the Winifred Holtby Prize later. The narration of the stories in the novel was mostly conducted in the form of memory. Besides this, in order to help the narrator Etsuko achieve the goal of curing her of trauma, a kind of ingenious writing strategy was used, namely, seeing the self in others. Thereupon, through some vague narration and the narrator’s stripping from the "mask", the past between Etsuko and Keiko became clearer, which laid the solid foundation for the study of Keiko’s trauma. In view of this, taking A Pale View of Hills as a research object, this thesis is intended to explore the unhealed trauma of Keiko and a series of reflections concerning her trauma.Throughout the researches at home and abroad, most of the attention has been paid to such three novels:The Remains of the Day (1989), The Unconsoled (1995) and Never Let Me Go (2005), while another three novels are limitedly researched. Although the scholars have more or less noticed the traumatic elements existing in the novel, yet the research focus is always on the protagonist Etsuko’s traumatic narration, traumatic memories and the cure of her trauma. Given this, based on the current situation of the frequent neglect of the vulnerable group, especially the children’s traumas, the deep researches and explorations on the little girl Keiko’s unhealed trauma not only have theoretical significance, but also have the epic meaning.Based on the analysis and exploration of the trauma theory, this whole thesis tried to probe into the unhealed trauma of Keiko from these two aspects, namely, trauma and reflection. In detail, this thesis is composed of introduction, conclusion and another three chapters.In the Introduction, the first part consisting of the writer’s experiences and his writing stories briefly introduces Kazuo Ishiguro, while the second part mainly introduces the novel A Pale View of Hills. Apart form the introduction of its stories, the writing strategies and the theme of the novel are also touched, which paved the way for the following research.The first chapter of the thesis puts special emphasis on the detailed combing and classification of the researches at home and abroad and then concentrates on the combing and analysis of the trauma theory. According to the research, the studies at abroad began much earlier and has more research perspectives compared with studies at home.The second chapter mainly explores the reasons for Keiko’s unhealed trauma. The first part discusses the first reason, namely the constant attack of family trauma and cultural trauma. The second reason is analyzed in the second part, that is, the subjective and objective refusal to heal the trauma. The last reason in the last pat is the hopeless cure of the worsening trauma.The third chapter of the whole thesis is the reflections on Keiko’s death as well as the underlying ways to her recovery from the traumas, in order that it can bring helps for those children who had similar experiences to Keiko in real society.The conclusion part briefly summarizes the reasons for Keiko’s tragic events and the underlying ways to avoid them, meanwhile the epic meaning of the thesis is discussed again.