Unreliable narration in Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day". A theoretical approach

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, Bielefeld University, language: English, abstract: This paper examines the narrator's reliability of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. The author of this paper aims to do this while casting a critical eye on aspects that may hint at Steven being an unreliable narrator. Therefore, this paper also takes into account aspects that could lead to the conclusion of Steven being a reliable narrator. Firstly, the crucial term unreliable narrator is going to be defined. Then, two long accepted theoretical approaches are going to be presented, namely, Frany Stanzel’s concept of Narrative Situation and Gérard Genette’s Structuralist Theory. Indeed, being aware of these narratological concepts is of vital importance for the reader. That is, it enables the latter to better keep track of how to analyze the narrative Structure in "The Remains of the Day" properly. The next step is applying these concepts to, the concrete example of, the narrator in The Remains of the Day. Secondly, several respective clues which backup the hypothesis of Unreliable Narration will be presented. More precisley, passages of the here discussed novel that specifically meet the criteria of inconsistency, incoherence and lack of correspondence will be pointed out. The approach to the subject will be a theory and analytical method based, close reading of "The Remains of the Day". All in all, it is going to be argued that, since the narrator of The Remains of the Day meets the criteria of inconsistency, incoherence and lack of correspondence, he should be considered unreliable.