The Remains of the Day

Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989

This book lingered in my mind for days. It was one of those rare occasions where a book leaves me with strong but blurry feelings I can't quite put a label on. I felt an urge to reconcile with its subtle but profound effects before moving on, so here goes...

Firstly, the book reads like you're actually traveling the English countryside with old Stevens, the narrator and protagonist, looking out the car window while he recounts his life to you like a grandpa would to his grandchild. The prose is so smooth, so restrained, so English, that you're almost tempted to sit up straight as you listen to his stories. The magic of the prose is in its subtlety. Everything happens between the lines, the unsaid undercurrent of the narrative. At times you almost want to interrupt him in protest and question some of the decisions he'd made, but then you realize that there's no point because what's done is done. The only thing you can do is figure out for yourselfwhat dignity means, what your values are, and how you can live a fulfilled life. Because as the butler demonstrates, the effects of living by misguided ideals without reflection only manifests itself, slowly and then all at once, when it's already too late.

Dignity and social constraints of the time (1920-30s England) are key themes in the book. Even the tragedy of the whole story is restrained, there wasn't a dramatic breakdown when the butler finally realizes his mistake in pushing Miss Kenton away, nor did he decide to walk away from his job. Rather, he chooses to make the best of what remains of his day and continue as a professional. The irony is that he is a tragic character precisely because he successfully lived out his idea of the dignity that "great butlers" possess.

‘dignity’ has to do crucially with a butler’s ability not to abandon the professional being he inhabits. Lesser butlers will abandon their professional being for the private one at the least provocation.

Professionalism is Stevens' North star, and he inhabits his "professional being" so completely that even his inner monologue fails to betray the role. I found it simultaneously amusing and sad that he felt the need to reiterate multiple times that he wanted to reunite with Miss Kenton purely for professional purposes and not because, oh I don't know, he misses and loves her? It's like he looks to this professional ideal to guide all of his decisions at various turning points in his life. He lets this ideal consume him completely, and in the end, this was at the expense of a (potentially) happier and more fulfilled life. I think Miss Kenton spoke for us all when she asks him "Why, Mr Stevens, why, why, why do you always have to pretend?"

It's not that Stevens thought so little of himself that he couldn't see himself as anything beyond a servant. On the contrary, he found meaning in his profession and saw this career of service not as a ladder but a wheel, where at the hub lies the houses of "great gentlemen" whose decisions emanated out to everyone else. The goal was to get as close to the hub as possible so that he can serve these great gentlemen - and by extension, humanity - to the best of his abilities. Houses like Darlington Hall had been where influential men gathered to debate their ideas and reach crucial decisions whose impact rippled out across Europe. Stevens reasoned that if he does his job well, these meetings will go smoothly, and thus lies his contribution to foreign affairs, and subsequently, to society at large.

However, this logic was contingent on the man he was serving to actually have good judgment and make the right decisions. He didn't allow himself to make his own mistakes or even express his own opinions. A blatant example of this is during a frustrating exchange with Mr Cardinal, where he was trying to get our Stevens to realize that his master was making a big mistake by naively trusting the wrong people out of old-fashioned nobility. Stevens fails to even entertain the possibility that maybe Lord Darlington was not making good judgments after all.

So there it is, our protagonist embodies his "professional being" and lives to his ideals so well that he was living through others, and never for himself. He even claims that even though he isn't well-travelled, he's "seen" more of the world than most people because of the sheer variety of prestigious house guests. In his lifelong strive to become a great butler, with all that dignity and professionalism, he fails to be someone who lives his life to the fullest. While I respect that in the end he doesn't wallow in lost opportunities, it raises the question: what was all that for? The whole story serves as a reminder to express yourself and live your life.

I love that we do begin to see some (short-lived) cracks towards the end where the real Stevens shines through with his repressed longing.

Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one’s relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.

And of course, that unforgettable admission while saying goodbye to Mis Kenton...

Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking.

These were some of the few moments of surrender where the butler allowed himself to lament on how his life turned out. What follows is melancholic but admirable. Instead of driving himself crazy with regret, or try to convince Miss Kenton to run away with him, he chooses to look forward to make the best of what remains of his day as a butler because he knows it's too late to do anything else. He leaves us with an ignited determination to master the art of banter, something he was struggling to fit into his professional persona at the beginning of the book ("this business of bantering is not a duty I feel I can ever discharge with enthusiasm"... lol). I do think that the trip to the countryside, seeing Miss Kenton again and reflecting on his life has made him realize that not everything he does has to be a duty. He's a human first before a butler, and he's lived his life with this in the wrong way around. I hope some good banter helps him set this straight for what time he has left.

Really, what a story, what great writing. For me, old Stevens imparts his wisdom through his mistakes and his reconciliation of them: what he had failed to do, and then what he did do to move on. Basically, there comes a point where you have to be courageous enough to embrace who you are and start living life for yourself instead of through others. When you do that, it's inevitable that you make mistakes but at least you own them and can move on carrying the battle scars better off than you were before. Throughout his life, the butler never gave himself that chance. It was only when he's had a chance to reflect on the past as Stevens the man, not Stevens the butler, does he realize his own misjudgments and allows himself to grieve for what could have been just for a little while, before returning to his duties with a new meaning to find in his duties: true human connection.

Perhaps it is indeed time I began to look at this whole matter of bantering more enthusiastically. After all, when one thinks about it, it is not such a foolish thing to indulge in – particularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the key to human warmth.

The Remains of the Day on Amazon