On The Identity Anxiety In Kazuo Ishiguro's A Pale View Of Hills: From The Perspective Of Cultural Memory

This thesis aims to interpret the identity anxiety of the protagonists Etsuko and Keiko in Kazuo Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills from the perspective of Cultural Memory.The thesis employs the theory of Cultural Memory to look into the site of war,the trace of the vicissitude of the society and the space displacement in the novel so as to find out the ideology and cultural recognition of the protagonists.A Pale View of Hills is a significant literary work for memory study and an important work of great literary value.This novel was published in 1982,which is the debut and representative novel of the noble prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro.The story was set in Japan after the Second World War when the society was undergoing great vicissitudes.The experience of the protagonist Etsuko represents the group of Japanese women who lost their family in the Nagasaki bombardment and were lost in bewilderment after the war.The research is divided into two parts: finding out the manifestation of Etsuko's and Keiko's identity anxiety and interpreting their anxiety.In the first part,the thesis focuses on the manifestation Etsuko's and Keiko's trauma of war and diasporic anxiety from the perspective of Cultural Memory.In the second part,the thesis analyzes the relation between protagonist's anxiety and media of Cultural Memory to interpret the causes of their anxiety.The research discovers that the causes for protagonists' identity anxiety are their bereavement from World War II and bewilderment after the war,maladjustment to new society trend in Japan and diasporic anxiety in the foreign culture.In addition,Etsuko had been confusing about her maternal identity.The novel is multum in parvo,which reveals the living condition of the generation of the post-war Japanese.The thesis indicates that when analyze immigration novel,the foci shouldn't be placed solely on the cultural discrepancies between the immigrating and immigrated country.The personal experience of the protagonist should also be considered.