“The Remains of the Day”, by Kazuo Ishiguro

 

245 pages, Vintage Books, ISBN13: 978-0679731726

It’s rare that a movie is better than the book it was based upon; often, the book is always better, or nearly so. But sometimes, we have a case in which a book and its movie adaptation are equal in terms of merit and quality, and so we have it here with The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. “The Remains of the Day” is one of my favorite all-time movies ever; I have literally watched it maybe a hundred times and it still affects me in ways that few movies have. And so when I saw the novel that the movie was based on at 2^nd & Charles I snatched it up, fully expecting that the movie would suffer in my eyes. But no: both book and movie are brilliant character studies that make the era they are placed in come alive, and I am delighted to say that one may read, or view, either adaptation and still come away moved…and not a little depressed.

The Remains of the Day is told entirely in the first person by Stevens, an English butler who has spent almost the whole of his career (indeed, the whole of his life) in service to Lord Darlington of Darlington Hall. In July 1956, Stevens decides to take a six-day road trip to the West Country of England – his first-ever vacation – at the behest of Mr. Farraday, an American gentleman and the new owner of Darlington Hall and, hence, Stevens’ new employer. While Stevens respects and gets on with Mr. Farraday, he fails to interact well with him on a social level (Stevens has several introspective and self-revelatory speculations as to the use of “Banter” and his inability to master the concept). And so Stevens embarks on his journey west to relax and rusticate, but we soon learn that there is an ulterior motive to this trip.

Stevens determines to visit Miss Kenton (or rather, Mrs. Benn), the former housekeeper of Darlington Hall who left twenty years earlier to get married. After receiving a letter from Mrs. Benn (hereafter Miss Kenton, as Stevens, perhaps absentmindedly, continues to call her), he  determines that as her marriage appears to be failing that she might like to return to her post as housekeeper of Darlington Hall. Since the end of The War, large manor houses have had difficulty staffing their many open positions; indeed, many of these manor houses cannot stay in the hands of the families that have occupied them for generations, seeing how death duties often makes it impossible to do so. That there also appears to be a more personal reason for wanting Miss Kenton back at the house, Stevens never says (although the movie hints at this).

The narrative is thus a road trip by Stevens set in 1956 with numerous recollections of his time serving Lord Darlington before and during The War; along the way, Stevens briefly comes into contact with several other characters, each of whom mirrors Stevens and show the reader different facets of his character (two in particular, Dr. Carlisle and Harry Smith, highlight themes in the book). He also recounts stories of his contemporaries, especially fellow butlers in other great houses who served other great men (ahem) with whom he struck up friendships. During these reminisces, Stevens also begins an inner debate about the definition of “Dignity” and how one cannot be a good butler, much less a great one, without it, again unknowingly giving the reader an insight into this most introspective yet utterly clueless man.

But Stevens’ most notable relationship by far is his long-term working relationship with Miss Kenton, for whom he appears to harbor repressed and never talked about romantic feelings (while this is much clearer in the movie, it is less so in the book). I have to say that one cannot be certain just when Miss Kenton fell for Stevens or vise-versa, or even why. Certainly, the two have frequent disagreements over various household affairs when they work together, but the disagreements are childish in nature and mainly serve to illustrate the fact that the two care for each other on some level. I guess. For I think that Miss Kenton is just as repressed as Stevens and as unable to tell him what she feels, the same as Stevens for Miss Kenton. And so they are both equally to blame for their wasted lives and pointless lovelessness.

At the end of the novel, Miss Kenton – Mrs. Benn – admits that her life may have turned out better if she had married Stevens; after hearing these words, Stevens is extremely upset, although he cannot quite figure out why that is so. He does not, however, tell Miss Kenton how he feels, and so finds himself right back in emotional square one. Oh, there is one brief appearance at the pier when Stevens encounters another butler, since retired, and confesses in a somewhat roundabout way that his was a wasted life in service to man he thought was of superior intellectual and moral character who turned to be anything but, while his own wants and desires were quashed. But Stevens soon recovers and returns to Darlington Hall, his only new resolve being to perfect the art of bantering to please his new employer.

This leads us to another theme of the novel, the all-important class-system of the UK. We learn through Stevens’ interactions with other characters that Lord Darlington was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, due mostly to his mistaken impression of their agenda prior to The War rather than to their anti-Semitic propaganda or other beliefs, going so far as to arrange and host dinner parties between the German and British heads of state to help both sides come to a peaceful understanding. Throughout the book Stevens steadfastly maintains that Lord Darlington was a perfect gentleman and that it is a shame his reputation has been soiled simply because he misunderstood the Nazis’ true aims; but upon learning how this gentleman of the highest order was fooled so easily shatters Stevens’ faith in the class system and his, and Darlington’s, place in it.

So then, what to make of The Remains of the Day? Salman Rushdie described the book as “a story both beautiful and cruel” as we witness “a man destroyed by the ideas upon which he has built his life”. For while Lord Darlington – and, indeed, all of the upper class – was able to choose the path his life took, Stevens – and, indeed, all of the lower classes – cannot say the same: “You see, I trusted…I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really, one has to ask oneself, what dignity is there in that? [returning to one of the themes of the book]”. It is a story primarily about regret: throughout his life, Stevens puts his absolute trust and devotion in a man who makes drastic mistakes while failing to pursue the one woman with whom he could have had a fulfilling and loving relationship. His prim mask of formality – his “Dignity” – cuts him off from intimacy, companionship and understanding. I say, Stevens, bit of a wasted life, wot?