An Analysis Of Identities In A Pale View Of Hills From The Perspective Of Space Theory

Kazuo Ishiguro(1954—)is a prominent British contemporary novelist who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2017.With Sir Salman Rushdie and Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul,they are known as the greatest immigrant litterateurs in Britain.Born in Nagasaki,Ishiguro immigrated to Britain in 1960 with his parents and two sisters,and got British nationality in 1982.His experience makes him concern more about immigrants’ living situation in the international context.Different from other immigrant writers,instead of paying attention to a specific country or nation,he explores the inner feelings of individuals from the perspective of internationalism.His representative works include The Remains of the Day,Never Let Me Go,An Artist of the Floating World and A Pale View of Hills.Published in 1982,A Pale View of Hills is Kazuo Ishiguro’s first work,which helped him win the prestigious Winifred Holtby Prize awarded by the Royal Society of Literature.It portrays immigrants’ state of existence against the background of war and,in a much delicate way,goes deep into their identity problems.Until now,scholars have studied this novel from perspectives like ethic morality,new historicism,modernism,post-colonialism,psychoanalysis and so on.However,there are few researches on this novel from the perspective of space theory,and there are a lot of issues about the identity construction of the main characters in the novel.Therefore,from the perspective of spatial criticism,this thesis discusses main characters’ identity construction.This study employs Henri Lefebvre’s space theory to give a detailed analysis of identity seeking process including identity confusion,identity exploration and identity reconstruction.This thesis is divided into three parts: introduction,body part and conclusion.The introduction reviews the present research on Kazuo Ishiguro and his novels,with a particular focus on his work A Pale View of Hills.Theories of space and identity lays the solid foundation for the textual analysis.Then the thesis structure comes next.The body part consists of three chapters.Chapter one explores three characters’ identity confusion in physical space.After the ruthless World War II,Etsuko,faced with the strict hierarchy in Japanese family,gradually cannot confirm her female identity in society,and then confronts female identity confusion;while the elder daughter,Keiko,experiences more complicated personal identity confusion in her rooms in Japan and Britain;after WWII,in the new postwar context,western culture,as an ideology of physical space,challenges Ogata-San’s traditional cultural identity.Chapter Two analyzes psychological space to probe how four protagonists explore their identities.Through the dialogue with herself,Etsuko tries to get rid of the traditional Japanese female identity.Meanwhile,she tries to identify herself as a “good mother” in order to make up for her maternal irresponsibility in psychological space.The exploration of the national identity between the two generations caused by special immigration experience conduces to accurately recognize their identities in Britain.Chapter Three focuses on that the main characters find the solution of reconstructing identity in social space.The forgiveness from Niki and Etsuko herself finally dissolves her emotion of guilt to Keiko,which reconstructs her maternal identity;as an immigrant,Etsuko,with an open mind,finally accepts the impact of eastern and western values and the integration of Japanese values,finally realizes the hybrid identity;while Niki’s identity reconstruction gives the meaningful reference to reconstruct the identity for immigrants like Etsuko and Keiko.Under cosmopolitanism environment,Niki is assimilated into the Western culture while confronting the Japanese national history and becomes a peacemaker of two social cultures.The conclusion gives the summary of protagonists’ identity construction in physical,psychological and social space.Through a detailed description of their identity issues,Ishiguro vividly reproduces the spiritual state of the people after the war,which shows his humanistic concern to the people who suffered great trauma in the war.By analyzing their identity problems from three spaces,this thesis hopes to utilize the successful examples of reconstructing identity to help immigrations to solve their identity problems.