Minor Characters’Cultural Identity Construction In Kazuo Ishiguro’s Works

Sir Kazuo Ishiguro(born 8 November 1954)is a Nobel Prize-winning British novelist,screenwriter,and short-story writer.Many of Ishiguro’s fictions are written in the first-person perspective to visually embody human failings.The characters implicitly reveal their flaws in the narrative and also achieve self-realization in personal development.The thesis focuses on three fictions.They are A Pale View of Hills(1982),The Remains of the Day(1989)and Never Let Me Go(2005).They are typical in narration of characters getting over sufferings and hardships in the great social changes to fulfill personal values and new identities.Contrary to main characters who lose themselves,this thesis analyzes the new cultural identity of minor characters in their fight against injustice and unfairness and the significant impact they exert on main characters.The thesis is comprised of three chapters and the introduction and the conclusion:The introduction sketches out life and writings of Ishiguro,and reviews the recent studies of the three fictions,then introduces identity formation theory,as well as the significance and structure of this thesis.In chapter one,it introduces the situations and crises that minor characters suffer from in new social orders.They are constrained by traditional stereotypes and shocked by foreign cultures that disorders bring to the nation.In chapter two,the thesis analyzes the striving of minor characters for personal values and a new cultural identity to realize justice and fairness in the new orders.They break their own traditional role in the process,while some obvious limitations are in their new cultural identity.In chapter three,it discusses the impact of cultural identities that minor characters have on main characters in the fictions.Main characters begin to shake off the obstacles in the old society to seek for their new cultural identity.In the conclusion,it summarizes minor characters’achievements and limitations in seeking cultural identity,and its significance to the identity construction of main characters and to the emphasis on striving of self-fulfillment in the social upheavals.