Analysis of Kazoo Ishiguro novel The Remains of the Day and Chapter 2 of Rob Burton’s book Artists of the Floating World Contemporary Writers Between Cultures
I think that most people have an aspect of the floating world in them. As humans we are constantly shifting between perspectives or roles. And, on a basic level I agree with Rob Burton’s quote of Kazuo Ishiguro saying that “Most of use are like butlers because we have these small, little tasks that we learn to do, but most of us don’t attempt to run the world. We just learn a job and try to do it to the best of our ability.” (Burton 51). Meaning that there is perhaps aspects of Stevens personality in all of us; not to say that we are all butlers but that in our human nature we only have so much capacity to learn and to do. Now perhaps where we learn Stevens tragic flaw is, is that he does not development this capacity past the learning of one aspect. Stevens does not contemplate what could be beyond his butler-ing abilities. And, while we has humans can not know and learn all there is, we have a great capacity and many of us are great proficients in topics of great interest or that deem to be a great success for us, such as our hobbies and our jobs. Some of us are lucky enough to have a job that is both a hobby and job; but most of us have jobs or careers that we are successful at and proficient at and then quite separate of that hobbies that spark the desire of our passions and interests. It is in this area that we once again have the opportunity to learn form Stevens character, he has no hobbies or interests outside of his work and attempts to learn bantering not for his own amusement or cognitive stimulation but to be more proficient at his butler-ing tasks.
Diverging from this idea this chapter also made me consider how we function with in these narratives. How do we function with in our own narrative, a national narrative, and then even a fictional narrative. What do these different narrative structures do for our development of reality? Stevens seems to miss the national narrative, to have no concept of goes on beyond the walls of Darlington Hall. To me this is a two sided sword, while on one hand he is a successful butler, admired and respected for his abilities as a butler, and would have little influence on the world outside of those tasks so why should he be concerned with a world outside of those tasks? But, on the other side of my sword what good countryman and well for that matter considerate human being would want to ignorant of what goes on outside of their own little world? There is another quote that Rob Burton uses by Kathleen Wall which states “What Stevens…[does not] possess…is a self-reflexive awareness of [his] narrative tracks. Further, [his] reluctance to reside in the floating world indicates a resistance to the world of change, of hybridized experiences, of global interconnectedness…” (Burton 52). Stevens inability to have a discourse with his reader, as a narrator, about the larger picture of what is going on in the world and the human rights violations that Hitler imposed upon society shows his lack of interconnectedness. Any time, his narration begins to venture down a track that would take the reader off the ideas of the household tasks that are occurring during the discussion of global matters the reader is pulled right back into the household tasks with some discussion of silver polish. Rather take the reader down a “dangerous” discourse that deals with matters that are controversial and perhaps beyond Stevens depth, he adverts their attention to menial matters that as a reader I could really careless about. Though it makes me question aspect of human capacity and interest. We rarely enter into a conversation or argument that we do not have strength of knowledge on our sides. We do this for many reasons, for our pride, for respect of the topic, humility, and general disinterest but what Stevens makes painfully obvious and perhaps contradictory is his aversion of the topic and his desire to be the new generation of butler that works for lord who endeavors to make society a better place. And, yet he does not address the topics of human rights and works for a lord who, perhaps ignorantly, aids one of the worst regimes the world has seen.
