3.2 Petry article - key Points Flashcards
What did Lawrence Graver call Stevens’ discourse?
A “Corseted idiom”
Petry claims “Stevens narrates in his very own language code”, but what are the features which substantiate this interpretation?
His use of periphrasis, euphemisms, paralipses and litotes
What does Stevens’ playing down of events emulate?
The narrative of Etsuko
Who stated it was more about what Stevens didn’t say within Remains?
Graham Swift
What was the contemporary atmosphere at the time of writing Remains (intertextually?)
Suez Crisis
What similarity exists between Stevens and Ono?
Embroilment with fascism - the Jewish affair “for the good of the house”
What does Gurewich establish about Stevens?
“It is only through his master that Stevens manages to establish his own worth”
What is the ‘other’ story behind Remains?
A love that failed, or a “sentimental love story”
What does Ishiguro do whilst Stevens is ‘driving forward, looking backward’?
Reminiscing of older narrative prose:
- The picaresque novel - a bildungstrip (King)
- Allusions to Lane and Jeeves
- Sherlock Holmes
What quote from Dr Watson in Sherlock Holmes almost mirrors Stevens?
“He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and (ob)serving machine that the world has ever seen
What could the journey from Darlington Hall to Kenton represent?
A journey of self liberation after a lifetime of self imprisonment
What are the three relationships Stevens develops?
With his two fathers, one biological, one class-oriented, and Miss Kenton.
What do Farraday and Kenton represent?
Kenton the past and tradition, Farraday change and present
What does Hassan say about the novel?
The novel simultaneously perfects and subverts its own literary tradition
What does Ishiguro himself say about the Englishness of Remains?
It’s more English than English
What does deconstructive, dissecting irony force the reader to acknowledge?
We are not reading the ‘real thing’ - neither a first person narrative of the likes of Copperfield, nor an original picaresque novel, nor a Hardyesque idyllic romance, not a Graham Greene espionage thriller - but a fiction that undermines itself. It is a mock.
What are the tragic elements Stevens considers English ideals?
Loyalty, devotion, emotional restraint, total self-control, ••Dignity••
What is the sinister side of England in Remains?
It is not ‘a harmonious, peaceful Arcadia’, but soil which could ‘nourish the seeds of destructive fascism’
What is the significance of the clothing imagery?
A literal and figurative way of clothing the private self from his own understanding and the public gaze. Language and memory itself clothes a painful reality - and a wasted life - from scrutiny
What does Stevens’ professional suit allow him to do?
The rhetoric allows him to guise his sexual and political disengagement
What does Gurewich comment on about the transition of the novel?
What started out as a mild comedy of manners turns into a tragedy, one that never loses its subtlety or power of understatement
Rushdie on Turbulence
“a turbulence as immense as it is slow”
What does Moscombe illustrate?
Stevens is totally unable to learn or adjust his opinions
What can Stevens’ narrative be called?
An unreliable narrative
