Schema-Based Research On Trauma In Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains Of The Day

Kazuo Ishiguro is a well-known modern Japanese-British novelist,the winner of the2017 Nobel Prize for Literature,and is regarded as one of the ―Three Immigrants‖ in the British literary world.As one of his important masterpieces,The Remains of the Day with ingenious structure and delicate language describes the traumatic psychological process of individuals and society in the context of cultural collision and class differentiation in Britain after the wars.Trauma is the most basic experience of human life and has become one of the themes of world literature.Current researches on The Remains of the Day by domestic and foreign scholars are limited to single literary criticism,and rarely combined with cognitive perspective to systematically explain trauma in the novel.Schema is a cognitive structure to organize and interpret information or experience,which provides a theoretical basis for language understanding and text interpretation.In the interpretation of literary works,readers often try to construct the corresponding framework at three levels: world,text and language.World-level framework focuses on the connection between text content and readers’ knowledge experience.Text-level framework represents readers‘ understanding of text structure and plot setting.Language-level framework refers to readers‘ grasp of language style of the work.From the perspective of schema,this paper tries to construct cognitive frameworks for the traumas in The Remains of the Day to help readers analyze the traits of trauma,so as to better understand trauma.Through the research,this thesis found that trauma in The Remains of the Day can be divided into individual,family and society trauma,which respectively are dilemma of self-identity,sub-health of family environment and collapse of imperial hegemony.The index of trauma increased in turn.In attempt to interpret the above three kinds of trauma in The Remains of the Day,this thesis correspondingly extracts three schemata including The Lost Other Schema,The Twisted Kinship Schema and The Vanished Empire Schema.Among them,the world representation of Other Schema is that the individual pursues dignity extremely but he cannot get,and he maintains loyalty but he loses himself;the text representation is the juxtaposition of internal and external narratives;and the language representation is characterized by stereotyped words,tedious sentences and use of repetition.In regard to Kinship Schema,its world representation is the indifference of family relations and the lack of care;the text representation is the supplementary explanation by means of interposed narration;and the language representation is the use of honorifics and irony.In regard to Empire Schema,its world representation is the imbalance of British political space and the invasion of multiple cultures under the new world pattern;the text representation is the interweaving of fragmented time and opposite space;and the language representation is the use of contrast and metaphor.From Other,Kinship to Empire Schema,these schemata interpret the repressed and helpless living conditions of little people,the family crises for separated relatives,and the marginalization of the whole British society after the dominant position falling behind,which reflects the anxiety of the contemporary people in the process of social upheaval and the replacement of the times.This thesis focuses on trauma from a cognitive perspective,which not only help readers deeply understand the trauma in literary works,but also arouse readers‘ concerns and reflections on individual survival and national destiny in the context of multiculturalism and globalization.