Family Supper Kazuo Ishiguro Flashcards
Exposition: “My father was a formiddable looking man with a large stony jaw and furious black eyebrows.”
Pepper: “perhaps i should have been a more attentive father”
A01: In the exposition, the narrator describes the father as stoic and conventually masculine- it is however evident that he is critical of these traits.
A02: cold geological imagery “stony” - rock like, inanimate marble or granite, his face is almost carved out of rock. Could there be a hidden geod/ hidden depths to his character??
threatening visual imagery whole quote- establishes his distant formal relationship with his father in his childhood.
A03: Japanese working fathers/ long hrs/ hardly home/ not hands on/ or is he a product of his time (see pepper)
MId point: “A man of principle and honour”
Pepper: “took his whole family with him”
A01: Ishiguro uses Watanabe’s honour suicide to contrast the son’s modernity with the father’s traditional outlook.
A02: declarative tone - he’s saying it very factually with no room for argument.
abstract noun “honour” represents his unchanging character and how his personality never shifts.
A03: His traditional views descend from Samurai culture and the honourable suicide of Seppuku. Japan has the highest rate of suicide for a HIC in 2017.
OR
WI: THe writer uses the son’s progressive values to highlight the father’s attitude to stoicism, self-sacrifice and focus towards his career.
Denouement: “We fell silent once more.”
Pepper: “ punctuated by long pauses”- echoes the start, the family is awkward and dysfunctional
A01: The silence motif is repeatedly used to reinforce the lack of communication; the father and son are still restrained and isolated.
A02: disorientating verb “fell”- the relationship is falling apart and lurching towards the point of no return.
silence motif “use pepper here”
A03: His father may not have been around much as he was a traditional Japanese salary man, this could’ve created a gap that slowly grew as the father refused to change.
OR
WI It shows that what parents do effects their children with long lasting difficulties that can only be fixed with time, love and care.
