Historical Transcendence Of The Haunting Past In Kazuo Ishigmo's Novels

This thesis conducts a detailed analysis of Kazuo Ishiguro's four novels with World War ? as the historical background in light of trauma theories, A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World, The Remains of the Day, and When We Were Orphans, and examines the author's attitude towards individual sufferings and traumatic history shown in his representation of war trauma and its effect in the post-war period.The thesis is divided into three parts, an introduction, a conclusion, and the main body which contains three chapters. The introduction includes an introduction of Kazuo Ishiguro's early life experience and its influence on his interest in individual life experiences, literature review, theoretical framework, and the integral structure of the thesis. Chapter one elaborates on ordinary Japanese's war trauma and their way to cope with it in the first two novels. While the personal choice of either victim or perpetrator is spared the ordeal of moral condemnation, the insufficient reflection on national history becomes problematic because it leads to the perpetuation of violence and inclination towards violence. Chapter two turns to the collapse of the British Empire and its effect on the British's identities in the latter two novels. While some fail to let go of past glory and acknowledge war guilt, others struggle to recognize and accept the loss of the Empire, offering possibility of working through trauma. In the third chapter, Ishiguro's literary aesthetic of trauma and its ethics are analyzed. Through representing war trauma and its post-war effect through first-person narration, nonlinearity and belated revelation, Ishiguro manages to arouse empathy in readers who can identify with the traumatized protagonists and meanwhile reflect on individuals'historical responsibility. Consequently, the conclusion reveals that apart from sincere care for individual sufferings, Kazuo Ishiguro as a writer takes on historical responsibility which is in turn translated into a historical lesson to readers.The thesis for the first time brings together the four novels set around the time of World War ?, and analyzes war trauma and its post-war effect in light of trauma theories. It exposes the dire consequences of insufficient working through of trauma while taking care to spare the protagonists from moral judgment, and demonstrates that Ishiguro tries to remember history and transmit it to the generations to come out of historical responsibility as a writer.