'Why should I not admit it?' | The Remains of the Day, Chapters 6 & 7
All he can do is fall back on his old ways
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‘Why should I not admit it?’ With these words, written as he reflects upon his conversation with Miss Kenton, Stevens is finally willing to be honest, not only with us, the readers, but with himself. After all, The Remains of the Day can read as if it is directed to us, but the entirety of the book is a conversation Stevens is having with himself. So, when he admits that his heart is breaking, he is allowing himself to acknowledge and reflect on his own emotions in a way that we rarely see throughout the book.
Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed – why should I not admit it? – at that moment, my heart was breaking.
Who is the ‘you’ here? There is a certain pretense to the novel – is Stevens narrating or he is writing in a journal? – that allows us to peer into his mind, and because some of these reflections are written in the second-person (‘as you might appreciate’) we feel we have been invited into an intimate conversation with Stevens. The trouble is that Stevens does not know how to be intimate. To be intimate is to be close, to be familiar. Yet Stevens is not even familiar with himself.
In these final pages, we learn a great deal.
We learn that Miss Kenton, now Mrs Benn, has often been unhappy in her marriage, and that she actually desires a life with Stevens.
‘But that doesn’t mean to say, of course, there aren’t occasions now and then – extremely desolate occasions – when you think to yourself: “What a terrible mistake I’ve made with my life.” And you get to thinking about a different life, a better life you might have had. For instance, I get to thinking about a life I may have had with you, Mr Stevens. And I suppose that’s when I get angry over some trivial little thing and leave. But each time I do so, I realize before long – my rightful place is with my husband. After all, there’s no turning back the clock now. One can’t be forever dwelling on what might have been. One should realize one has as good as most, perhaps better, and be grateful.’
This, of course, immediately precedes Stevens’ admission that his heart is broken. Notice how Miss Kenton rationalizes her unhappiness, however: ‘my rightful place is with my husband.’ It is this sort of reasoning that prevented Stevens and Miss Kenton from ever forming a romantic relationship, isn’t it? As Stevens would never allow himself to cease being a butler, even when he was clearly drawn to Miss Kenton. The only exception may have been their cocoa evenings, the evenings we never see directly. Stevens at one point mentions that they always behaved with propriety, but there seemed to be more going on — the fact that Stevens provides few details is perhaps another mechanism of self-deceit.
We do not only learn about the failure of Stevens and Miss Kenton to form a relationship, resulting in mutual unhappiness. We also learn more about the failings of Lord Darlington. Darlington was, at least according to his godson, being played by the Germans, just another pawn of Hitler’s. He behaved like a gentleman who wanted to treat a defeated foe with dignity, we’re told, but that this was a critical error, as the foe was planning to fight again. Was Darlington a fascist? Stevens gives indications that his heart was never committed to the cause, that he never held a prolonged prejudice against Jews, either. But he was certainly tolerant of these ideologies and, in some critical ways, assistive.
But as Stevens looks back, finally being honest with another person (a butler at a small house), he says:
‘Lord Darlington wasn’t a bad man. He wasn’t a bad man at all. And at least he had the privilege of being able to say at the end of his life that he made his own mistakes. His lordship was a courageous man. He chose a certain path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at least. As for myself, I cannot even claim that. You see, I trusted. I trusted in his lordship’s wisdom. All those years I served him, I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really – one has to ask oneself – what dignity is there in that?’
Darlington was near the hub; he tried to change the course of world events; he failed; yet, ‘he chose it’; ‘he had the privilege of being able to say at the end of his life that he made his own mistakes.’ There is dignity in that choice, I think, and it is a dignity that has been denied Stevens — or, rather, a dignity that he has denied himself! As much as Stevens wants to rationalize his life by saying he was merely serving, that this was all he could ever aspire to, we must be honest in our assessment: he chose. Time and time again, he chose. He chose not to be there for his father’s death; he chose to let Miss Kenton leave without acknowledging his feelings; he chose to continue with Lord Darlington. As a matter of respect for him, we should not lose sight of the fact that he made decisions. He was not simply going along with the world.
Last week,
left this as part of her comment:It's interesting because I haven't read The Remains of the Day for a while and when I last did, I definitely thought the book was about how clueless Stevens is and how he has wasted his life by focusing on exactly the wrong thing. But in Ishiguro's futuristic work Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun, I feel like the characters who serve/sacrifice themselves for others... exist on kind of a higher plane that the book admires even while finding it heartbreaking? I wonder why the meaning of that "butler" role shifted for him thematically in the later books.
It’s worth pondering this a bit. It turns out that Ishiguro has returned again and again to servants and those who sacrifice themselves for others. Klara and the Sun, for instance, is about an Artificial Friend (AF) who serves a young girl as a companion. As something less than human, Klara is routinely mistreated, despite the fact that we can see that she has a rich inner life. Klara has a purity of spirit that many of the human characters lack, as the world of Klara and the Sun is an alienated and callous world. Klara is more human than the humans.
Stevens is not shown in such a flattering light, but I don’t think Ishiguro means to portray him as purely clueless — he’s a tragic figure. In some of Ishiguro’s other works, the tragedy comes from the world’s failure to acknowledge the humanity of the other; in The Remains of the Day, the tragedy comes from Stevens’ refusal to acknowledge his own humanity.
And so, at the end, Stevens finds a little solace in banter. Yet, all he can do is fall back on his old ways, rationalizing this instrument for human warmth as the sort of thing a good butler should be able to provide for his employer.
And that brings us to the end of The Remains of the Day. My final assessment: I think this novel is perfect. I would not change a thing. I know I will return to it again in a few years.
Let me know your final thoughts, and I look forward to seeing some of you via Zoom this coming Sunday.
I think if I read this book when I was younger, I would have thought, "So what? Stevens made his choices, or better yet deliberately did not make choices" and then moved on to my next book.
But I am older, and I greatly appreciate it. I am amazed by the feelings Ishiguro evokes with the spareness of his writing. The things he chose not to elaborate upon and leave to us to muse upon is masterful. For example, leaving out the specific backstory of Stevens' and his father's relationship allowed Ishiguro to craft a more universal narritive while allowing us readers to connect with it on a personal level.
It occurs to me that Stevens just does not have the capacity for critical thinking unless he is in conversation with someone else, such as with the other butler in the small house. In this way, this book is Steven's conversation with us, the reader, and unfortunately we cannot push back on him to have him reconsider his final choice to repress his feelings and fall back to being the consummate professional.
I have no issue with unquestioning loyalty and devotion since this how people learn "The Way" for both religion, the Samurai code of Bushido, and to a lesser degree the whole notion of appprenticeship. But Stevens uses professional dignity as an excuse not to deal with his feelings. That's his only way of coping with life -- no friends, no mentors -- and to me, that's truly heartbreaking.
I, too, should admit that my heart was breaking in unison with Stevens'.
Yes, Stevens chose to devote himself to a "dignified" butler life and to distance himself from meaningful relationships. But seeing a hint of his feelings, even if it was for just a moment, has an incredible emotional impact.
Mr Stevens' self-deception is fascinating to me precisely because we see what might be some (very thin) cracks in his convictions. How much can one lie to oneself? Does Stevens know, deep down, that what his former boss did was wrong or foolish? Does any part of him admit that putting all his energy into a devoted butler life was not worth the sacrifice? I keep wondering how much of Stevens’ narration is an attempt to shut down these questions and how much is an attempt to come to grips with them.
I don't know exactly how Ishiguro manages to evoke these ambiguous, complex emotions but I love how the unreliability of the narrator contributes to it. Even the choice to set the last chapter two full days after the previous one is telling.
I loved the novel and the weekly discussions have only made it better. I had not read any other books by Ishiguro but I will certainly add some to my reading list - recommendations welcome!