Identity And Space In When We Were Orphans And Never Let Me Go

Japanese-British writer Kazuo Ishiguro is,together with V.S.Naipaul and Salman Rushdie,one of the "the Powerful Trio of Immigrant Writers" in British literary circles.Ishiguro constantly focuses on identity in his novels.His two novels When We Were Orphans and Never Let Me Go,which come off the press successively,both discuss the protagonists’ unremitting pursuit of self-identity.This paper argues that the protagonists in the two novels both experience identity loss,anxiety and rootlessness at first,but they try to reconcile with themselves and the past and finally find their own identity.From the perspective of space,this paper aims at exploring the identity issue embodied in When We Were Orphans and Never Let Me Go,and dealing with the implied connotations of reconstructing cultural and self-identity,thus disclosing Ishiguro’s deep concern about the dilemma of contemporary human identity and his view on identity.This thesis justifies that different dimensions of spaces in the texts,that is,the isolation of space,the transference in space and the change in chronotopes represent the changing identities of the characters.Space theory provides a new perspective for the identity issue in Ishiguro’s novels.The thesis consists of three main chapters in addition to the introduction and conclusion part.The first chapter argues that the isolation of space is a metaphorical representation of identity anxiety and illusion.The second chapter comes to show that the transference in space symbolizes protagonists’rootlessness.The third chapter examines protagonists’ reflection on self-identity in the change of chronotopes.The process of identity construction in different spaces reflects Ishiguro’s positive view on identity and exploration of the identity dilemma of contemporary people under the background of globalization and multi-culture situation.The comparative study of the two novels reveals that Ishiguro expands the scope of identity from nation to humanity in general,which also demonstrates his dynamic,developing,plural and tolerant view on identity.