Abstract
Kazuo Ishiguro’s exploration of memory in A Pale View of Hills opens a window for us to understand his literary creation. Although the academic community fully acknowledges Ishiguro’s reliance on memory and recognizes the connection between the writer’s own memories of his native Japan and this work, it has not yet analyzed the mechanism of memory’s occurrence and development as a central topic. As a result, the role of memory elements in the theme of this novel remains obscure. Utilizing the philosophical theory of memory, this article conducts an in-depth examination of the writer’s memory and the characters’ memories and finds that the protagonist’s memory of the atomic bombing is constructed through Ishiguro’s transferential framing of his own memories of his native Japan. Ishiguro uses the mutual referencing of Etsuko’s narration – Etsuko’s narration to Sachiko, and Sachiko’s narration to the unnamed woman – to allude to the widespread sense of collective loss among people in post-war Japan. He deliberately designs a spiral literary rhetorical structure of overlapping references to war memories, ultimately achieving a transformation of the re-encoding of war trauma.
Note
This article is part of Project No. 2025GK06 funded by the Scientific Research Start-up Fund for High-Level Talents Sponsored by Yulin University.
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© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Contributions
- Friedrich Nietzsche and René Wellek’s Concept of Literary History (Neo-Idealistic Acceptance among Slavonic Literatures)
- « Sourire au milieu du pillage ». La dénonciation du néolibéralisme dans le théâtre d’Eudes Labrusse : Le Rêve d’Alvaro
- An Ophelia for the Anthropocene: Floral Agency and the Rewriting of Ophelia’s Victimhood in Hamlet
- Music Writing and Community Construction in A Raisin in the Sun
- Transgenerational Trauma, Belated Witnessing, and Resilience in Jacqueline Woodson’s Red at the Bone
- Nagasaki’s Scar: The Formation, Reference, and Transformation of Nuclear Explosion Memory in A Pale View of Hills
- Reviews
- Mona Körte, Elisa Ronzheimer und Sebastian Schönbeck, Hgg.: Wechselwörter. Personalpronomen in Bewegung (Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie). Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag 2025. 274 S.
- James V. Morrison: Comedy in Literature and Popular Culture: From Aristophanes to Saturday Night Live. London: Routledge, 2025. ix + 233 pp.
- Jutta Müller-Tamm und Sylwia Werner, Hgg.: Mobile Avantgarden. Netzwerke der Moderne im nördlichen und östlichen Europa (WeltLiteraturen / World Literatures, Bd. 25). Berlin und Boston: De Gruyter, 2025. 250 S.
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Contributions
- Friedrich Nietzsche and René Wellek’s Concept of Literary History (Neo-Idealistic Acceptance among Slavonic Literatures)
- « Sourire au milieu du pillage ». La dénonciation du néolibéralisme dans le théâtre d’Eudes Labrusse : Le Rêve d’Alvaro
- An Ophelia for the Anthropocene: Floral Agency and the Rewriting of Ophelia’s Victimhood in Hamlet
- Music Writing and Community Construction in A Raisin in the Sun
- Transgenerational Trauma, Belated Witnessing, and Resilience in Jacqueline Woodson’s Red at the Bone
- Nagasaki’s Scar: The Formation, Reference, and Transformation of Nuclear Explosion Memory in A Pale View of Hills
- Reviews
- Mona Körte, Elisa Ronzheimer und Sebastian Schönbeck, Hgg.: Wechselwörter. Personalpronomen in Bewegung (Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie). Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag 2025. 274 S.
- James V. Morrison: Comedy in Literature and Popular Culture: From Aristophanes to Saturday Night Live. London: Routledge, 2025. ix + 233 pp.
- Jutta Müller-Tamm und Sylwia Werner, Hgg.: Mobile Avantgarden. Netzwerke der Moderne im nördlichen und östlichen Europa (WeltLiteraturen / World Literatures, Bd. 25). Berlin und Boston: De Gruyter, 2025. 250 S.