On Forgetting In Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans

When We Were Orphans is Kazuo Ishiguro’s fifth novel.It discusses memory and forgetting with unique narrative skills.This thesis uses narrative strategies of nostalgia,fetishism,mythmaking and silence as the research point to study memory and forgetting in the novel.This thesis holds that narrative of the novel has three types:First,in the narrative of individual memory,the narrator Christopher Banks constructs an identity of a famous detective through nostalgia for childhood and fetishism for saving the world.The identity helps him heal his childhood trauma.Second,the thesis discusses foreign colonists’ collective memory.In the novel,they forget the identity of historical perpetrators by constructing the myth that the opium trade is a legitimate activity and keeping silent towards the Sino-Japanese war.Forgetting helps them repress feelings of guilt.It indicates that collective memory is under the control of power.This thesis further studies files,newspapers,roads and buildings in the novel,which are carriers of cultural memory.It finds that cultural memory is dependent on a specific context and is controlled by the dominant power.Things that are excluded in the construction of cultural memory will be forgotten.Through discussing strategies that individuals and collectives adopt to construct the past,this thesis believes that in this novel forgetting is both a tool and the result of manipulation.This thesis aims to enrich the memory study of When We Were Orphans and shed some light on future study.It also hopes to remind people that memory and history are complicated issues.In a post-war era,forgetting is not a proper way to deal with war trauma.Human beings should remember history so that the same mistake will not be repeated.