Revisiting the Memory of Guilt in Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans
The object of this paper is to show how unreliable memories enhanced into a ‘family romance’ confront the fantasized reality when the hero leaves on his quest for ‘his’ truth. The hero’s deconstruction of fantasy involves moving through the maze of the ‘warren’ in old Shanghai, a metaphor for his ow...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
2005-11-01
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| Series: | Études Britanniques Contemporaines |
| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/13816 |
| Summary: | The object of this paper is to show how unreliable memories enhanced into a ‘family romance’ confront the fantasized reality when the hero leaves on his quest for ‘his’ truth. The hero’s deconstruction of fantasy involves moving through the maze of the ‘warren’ in old Shanghai, a metaphor for his own unconscious, from which a lethal real emerges and where Banks loses his mock-heroic dimension, where the self-appointed saviour of humanity is humbled into admitting his own sense of guilt. My intention is to prove that the strength of the novel lies in the careful phasing of the metamnesia which bypasses screen-memories to turn the dream world of childhood into a nightmare and help Christopher Banks kill young Puffin as fantasised memories gradually invade the consciousness of the hero to bring him to the verge of madness. |
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| ISSN: | 1168-4917 2271-5444 |