Reading Order
The Remains of the Day Reading Order
The Remains of the Day (1989) by Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the most perfectly constructed British novels of the twentieth century — a first-person narrative by Stevens, the consummate English butler, who takes a motoring holiday through the West Country in the mid-1950s and, in the process, gradually and painfully reveals to himself (and to us) the nature of the life he has wasted in service to a man who turned out to be a Nazi sympathizer. The novel is a masterpiece of what might be called the aesthetics of repression: Stevens's prose is formal, precise, evasive, qualified, constantly rationalizing — the voice of a man who has suppressed his own feelings so thoroughly that he can barely acknowledge them even in retrospect. Ishiguro, who was born in Nagasaki and came to England as a child, brought an outsider's clarity to the distinctive British culture of dignity, duty, and restraint that the novel anatomizes. Stevens's professional ideal — 'dignity' in a butler — turns out to be indistinguishable from the suppression of self: the man who achieves perfect dignity has, in Stevens's definition, achieved the perfect subordination of his own personality to his professional role. The novel reveals this ideal as both genuinely admirable (Stevens is excellent at what he does) and genuinely catastrophic: his failure to speak honestly to Miss Kenton, the housekeeper whose feelings for him he understands but cannot acknowledge, is his life's great missed opportunity, and the novel's quiet revelation of this loss is one of the most devastating in contemporary fiction.
Where to start
The Remains of the Day — the novel rewards slow reading; Stevens's rationalizations accumulate, and what he is not saying becomes more and more visible as the motoring holiday progresses.
Complete The Remains of the Day Book List
- 1Buy
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro·1989·The novel — Stevens's motoring holiday, Miss Kenton, and the life he has wasted in service to a Nazi sympathizer. - 2Buy
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro·2005·Ishiguro's dystopian novel — clones raised for organ donation; the same aesthetics of repression and the same quiet devastation. - 3Buy
The Unconsoled
Kazuo Ishiguro·1995·Ishiguro's most Kafkaesque novel — a pianist's increasingly surreal obligations in an unnamed European city. - 4Buy
The Remains of the Day (Vintage)
Kazuo Ishiguro·1993·The Vintage paperback edition includes an author's note on the novel's background. - 5Buy
Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh·1945·Waugh's novel of nostalgia and the English Catholic aristocracy — another retrospective narration of a lost world, another failure of love buried under class and religion. - 6Buy
On Chesil Beach
Ian McEwan·2007·McEwan's novella of a failed wedding night and the life it forecloses — the same precision about the cost of English emotional repression. - 7Buy
An Artist of the Floating World
Kazuo Ishiguro·1986·Ishiguro's second novel — a Japanese painter who realizes in retrospect that his art served Japanese nationalism; the Japanese parallel to Stevens's English complicity. - 8Buy
The Remains of the Day
Ford Madox Ford·1915·Ford's The Good Soldier — another retrospective narrative in which the narrator gradually reveals what he has repressed; Dowell is to Stevens as Ford is to Ishiguro.
The Remains of the Day — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Remains of the Day about?
The Remains of the Day follows Stevens, the butler of Darlington Hall, who takes a week's motoring holiday through the West Country in the mid-1950s to visit Miss Kenton (now Mrs. Benn), the former housekeeper of Darlington Hall, who has written to hint that she might want to return. During the drive, Stevens reflects on his career, his professional ideal of 'dignity', his late employer Lord Darlington (who was naive enough to be recruited as a Nazi sympathizer before the war), and his relationship with Miss Kenton. The novel's devastating revelation is that Stevens had feelings for Miss Kenton that he could never acknowledge, that she had feelings for him that she tried to make clear, and that his inability to respond has cost them both the life they might have had together.
What is Stevens's professional ideal of dignity in The Remains of the Day?
Stevens's professional ideal — developed at length in the novel's early sections — is that a great butler achieves 'dignity': the capacity to maintain his professional persona in all circumstances, never stepping out of role regardless of what happens. He illustrates this with stories of great butlers who continued to serve flawlessly even in situations of extreme personal distress. The novel reveals this ideal as both admirable (Stevens is genuinely excellent at his work) and catastrophic: dignity, as Stevens defines it, is the perfect suppression of self, and the man who achieves perfect dignity has achieved the perfect erasure of his own personality. His failure to acknowledge his feelings for Miss Kenton is the direct consequence of this ideal — to acknowledge them would be to step out of role, and stepping out of role is what no great butler does.
Who is Lord Darlington in The Remains of the Day?
Lord Darlington is Stevens's late employer — a well-meaning English aristocrat who, in the 1930s, was recruited into the Nazi sympathizer circles that were trying to prevent another European war through appeasement. Darlington's involvement with the Nazis was a product of naivety and class confidence rather than genuine fascism — he genuinely believed he was working for peace — but it destroyed his reputation after the war. Stevens's loyalty to Darlington — his refusal, even retrospectively, to condemn his employer — is one of the novel's most troubling aspects: Stevens has organized his entire life around service to a man who turned out to be wrong, and he cannot quite bring himself to acknowledge this.
What is the significance of the ending of The Remains of the Day?
The ending of The Remains of the Day takes place on a pier at Weymouth. Stevens has just met Miss Kenton and learned that, despite being unhappily married, she will not leave her husband to return to Darlington Hall (or to him). She tells him that she sometimes thinks about what might have been if things had been different. Stevens, walking on the pier afterward, tells a fellow bench-sitter that he should look to the future rather than the past. The novel's last line — 'I should hope, then, that by the time evening falls, I shall be in a position to say that the day's work has been good' — is Stevens's decision to make what he can of what is left of his life. The 'remains of the day' is both the afternoon that remains and the diminished life that remains after the losses Stevens has just fully faced.
What should I read after The Remains of the Day?
After The Remains of the Day, the obvious next step is Ishiguro's other novels: Never Let Me Go (2005), his dystopian masterpiece that uses the same aesthetics of repression for an even more devastating effect; An Artist of the Floating World (1986), his second novel and the Japanese parallel to Stevens's story; and The Unconsoled (1995), his most Kafkaesque and challenging work. For the British literary tradition the novel belongs to, Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier are the key predecessors in retrospective narration and English repression. Ian McEwan's novels — particularly On Chesil Beach and Atonement — share Ishiguro's precision about the cost of English emotional restraint.
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