‘Sentenced to live? – first-person narration as apologetics in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels’
This talk examines the place that the idea of ‘defence mechanisms’ occupies in Ishiguro’s novels using psychoanalytic literary theory. It starts from the premise that protagonists reinterpret the events of their life following the pattern of a plea in order to come to terms with their overwhelming suffering. The question that is posed to what extent the first-person singular narration of main protagonists can be interpreted as a void to face responsibility and how can it act as a defensive tool for reframing past and painful events. Focusing on A Pale View of Hills and The Remains of the Day, this paper brings to the fore some of the main points by which protagonists first-person narration act as a self-justifying tool for hiding, deflecting and distorting stories recounted. In case of main characters of Ishiguro, their arbitrary story-telling provokes the idea that by sublimation and projection their deeds can be forgiven or at least understood.