Annotated Bibliography: A Pale View of Hills Home | Annotated Bibliographies | A Pale View of Hills | Rhapsody in August | Term Project

Ishiguro, Kazuo. A Pale View of Hills. 1982. New York: Vintage International-Random House,        1990. Annan, Gabriele. “On the High Wire”. New York Review of Books 37.19             (1989). 3-4. < http://www.galegroup.com/informarks/>.  This article provided well-rounded criticism on Ishiguro’s first three books, A Pale View of Hills, Artist of a Floating World, and The Remains of the Day. Like many critics Annan notes the similarities of all three novels in the first person narrators who know less about themselves than the audience and who use selective memory in an effort to deal with past shame. She ties this shame to the Japanese-ness of the narrators, including the English butler Stevens in Remains, that stems from the “guilt and shame incurred in the service of duty, loyalty, and tradition” and that the characters that do so are punished for it. She notes how is style and tone is quiet but the novel quickly states it’s about a Japanese girl who committed suicide in England. Pale View is a ghost story not recognized by the narrator. Niki leaves in part because of a lack of connection with Etsuko, but also because she can’t sleep because of the unseen ghost. Unlike Sachiko, Etsuko behaves like a traditional Japanese role even in her narrative she never makes any vicious or sarcastic asides. Annan blames this role for preventing a connection between Etsuko and Mariko, because Etsuko only wants to help Mariko become a well-behaved Japanese girl and is unable to offer trivialities for her miseries. Ishiguro puts inadequacy behind Etsuko’s mask and show he’s disapproval of Etsuko just as she disapproves of Sachiko and Niki. Ishiguro uses a detective style format to plant clues. The narrator begins in good standing but as we find out more about them we realize the doubt behind them. Annan sees the punishment as severe but inspiring a Dickensian pity. Annan concludes her discusion on Pale View by noting the division between private and public shame as evidenced in Etsuko’s private reflections and Okata’s confrontation with his former pupil. [Another scene only one critic I’ve read made note of is when Etsuko meets the English neighbor who asks about Keiko but Etsuko chooses to be quiet thereby avoiding the public shame. Ogata may have reflected later about what took place and come to a new understanding. However, Etsuko carefully avoids the entire situation.  B.N.]  Janik, Ivan Del. No End of History: Evidence from the Contemporary English Novel.             Twentieth Century Literature V# (Date): 160-167.  This article explores how a wide range of modern English authors have circled, flirted with, and crossed the borders of historical fiction. Janik feels that while many works may not pass every criteria they often pass at least several. Janik notes much popular writing today is rich with historical concepts. He points out that many of the more ambitious British novels of the 1980’s and 1990’s share a sharp awareness of history and focus on its potential meanings. Janik also notes these new types of historical novels go beyond the categories used to divide contemporary fiction. He points out that while Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day appears antimodern with a classical realism it also employs ala Faulkner, Woolf, and Joyce open endings, multiple points of view, myth, and times shifts. The modern writers don’t share a common approach to their historical treatments but do believe to understand the present we have to understand the past. He quotes Ishiguro’s interest in how “one uses memory for one’s own purposes (and) one’s own ends…(166).” Janik acknowledges that while stories like A Pale View of Hills and The Remains of the Day might seem to be more about personal reflection they are also tied with historical figures or ostensibly to historical events. [I found this article useful in connecting Ishiguro and A Pale View of Hills with the genre of historical fiction. Even though the vast majority of the novels and authors referenced in this article cannot be connected with my project, they did help show how many current authors push the envelopes of not only what is considered historical fiction but also many other literary conventions making pigeon holing them difficult. It also helped provide context and an understanding of Ishiguro’s contemporaries where and when this work was published and his ongoing works that all seem to work both inside and outside the borders of historical fiction.  B.N.] Mason, Gregory. An Interview With Kazuo Ishiguro. Contemporary Literature. 30:3 (1989):                pagenumbersneededhere. Ishiguro subtlety uses a first person narrator in A Pale View of Hills whose memories are “hamstrung” by omissions and inconsistencies toward an unnerving revelation cleverly hidden in the point of view itself. In the interview Ishiguro reveals his literary influences are almost exclusively Western. He sees himself influenced more by Japanese films than Japanese literature and states he watches a lot of them. The books narrative strategy includes a huge gap. Ishiguro states it’s about a middle aged Japanese woman exiled in England who has a painful memories about coming to the West and its effects on her daughter who later commits suicide. The narrator talks all around this event and in so doing leaves it as a huge gap. The strategy was to was show how someone talks about events they can’t face by using other people’s stories. Ishiguro explores this terrain with the language of “self-deception and self-protection (337).” He also clarifies his intention in the pivotal seen in which the narrator Etsuko addresses the child Mariko as if she were her mother. Since the whole point of the story was really about Etsuko, whether Sachiko existed or not, the meaning Etsuko takes form the Sachiko story is really the meaning she takes for her own. He wanted for Etsuko to just let this cover slip out at the most intense part of the story by not even bothering to put it in the third person any longer. Ishiguro admits that while the effect was stunning his intent was for the flashbacks to be more fuzzy like a memory and that they authority given their realistic presentation causes Sachiko’s slip to seem too sudden. He later says the book’s focus is on emotional upheaval and that he is not interested in solid facts. The book is based around Etsuko’s guilt at sacrificing her first daughter Keiko for her own happiness, while the second Nikki tells her she did the right thing, she is not concerned and attempts to console herself by arranging her memories in order to retain some dignity. [I found this article particularly useful in that the Ishiguro spoke directly about one of the novels most surprising and confusing passages. He also identified Japanese films as one his influences and as his primary Japanese influence. Like Bernstein and Ravina’s review of Rhapsody it also focused on the strong role of guilt in both pieces.  B.N.] Shafer, Brian. Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro. Columbia, SC: University of             South Carolina Press, 1998. 1-37.  Shafer begins by providing educational and biographical background on Ishiguro. He explains how Ishiguro is an “international artist” concerned more with personal emotions that are connected to historical settings. Ishiguro uses narrators who reflect on past events to help explain/heal the present. These narrators have been accused of being unreliable but Shafer points out it is the emotions that are important not the details. He points to Ishiguro’s first three novels as an evolution, with Remains of the Day being nearly perfect. Shafer uses useful quotes from several interviews where Ishiguro refers to the works but also provides extensive commentary of his own. Shafer quotes Salman Rushdie who noted beneath Ishiguro’s calm exterior is “turbulence as immense as it is slow”. Shafer sees the plot of A Pale View of Hills being brief and that more information is implied than questions answered. While Niki and Etsuko rarely speak of Keiko she hovers over everything. The Etsuko story is the majority of the book and it is not told to Niki. Etsuko and Ogata-San use a foggy memory to explain past activities. Ogata-San also deliberately avoids certain areas while walking through Nagasaki just as Etsuko avoids painful areas in her narrative. Shafer sees Ogata’s character reflected in both Ono in An Artist of the Floating World and Stevens in Remains of the Day. Etsuko is briefly admitted into Sachiko’s confidence just as we are briefly admitted to Etsuko’s. The parallels between Etsuko and Sachiko are many. Shafer sees signs of abuse at the hands of the first husband as one of them. Sachiko’s husband forbade her to speak/learn English and was very patriotic and old fashioned. Etsuko seems to be in a loveless marriage. Jiro, her husband, doesn’t even show respect for his father. Etsuko represses the real story with that of Sachiko’s. Ishiguro isn’t as concerned with solid facts as with emotional upheaval. The pale view relates to both the distant nature of the memory and its shadowy recollection. Ishiguro shows the abuse of Mariko without telling or explaining it. Mariko is left alone and Sachiko rationalizes she should be okay because she’s been left before This in not unlike Keiko left alone later in Manchester. Shafer parallels the desire of Sachiko and Etsuko to escape with that of Eveline Hill imagining a new life with Frank in Dubliners. Shafer notes neither Frank is frank is these stories. Sachiko and Mariko function less as real individuals than as characters where Etsuko can project her own guilt about Keiko. Niki works as a voice of rationalization for her mother’s actions but Etsuko is unable to reconcile her guilt. Etsuko admits she knew Keiko would be unhappy but brought her to England anyway. She then states she doesn’t want to discuss it any further, at least directly. Shafer also points out the use of a ghost story in the novel, as Keiko’s ghost appears to haunt her old room, at least in the minds of Etsuko and Niki. Shafer also sees a parallel between the river near Sachiko’s house and the River Styx. Shafer believes Ishiguro uses the river as a transition between life and death. Scenes like the woman drowning her infant, the imaginary women across the bridge, and the drowning of the cats are all pointed to as emphasizing this connection. Etsuko believes she sees this imaginary women/river god when she sees Mariko’s aunt approaching the cottage. When Mariko crosses the river she appears dead on the bank and is cold to the touch. Shafer also applies a Freudian analysis in explaining the characters connection to the river and therefore death. Shafer sees a sadomasochistic relationship between Sachiko and Mariko. Sachiko insists on drowning the cats and Mariko insists on watching. Shafer draws a parallel with the tomato plants that Etsuko later neglects and allows to die. Keiko attempts to prop them up but no doubt it’s to late. Shafer concludes by tying together Etsuko’s final fear through a series of images: Mariko playing in the trees, the girl hanging from a swing/noose, the child murders and the girl found hanging from a tree, and Keiko’s image hanging in Manchester. Together this images amount to Etsuko’s self imposed guilt. The scene where the girl asks her repeated with signs of fear “why do you have the rope, what are you doing with the rope?” show’s Etsuko’s fear that she is directly responsible for her daughters death through neglect. [This book is an excellent resource for in-depth analysis of Ishiguro’s novels. Some of the analysis seemed like a bit of a reach, such as the S & M observation, but Shafer is able to back up all his positions with direct references. He also referred to many other great sources thereby providing more material for my research.  B.N.]                                                                                 Wong, Cynthia. “The Shame of Memory: Blanchot’s Self-Dispossession             in Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills”. CLIO 24.2 (1995): 127-145.  This article contains detailed and sometimes difficult to understand analysis about Ishiguro’s use of selective rememory and narrative strategies. Like other Ishiguro articles this one begins by looking at the use of protagonists with deceptive memories in Ishiguro’s first three books. It quickly focuses though on Maurice Blanchot’s “torment of language,” where the narrative is working as a forgetting. In retelling the story the speakers are tormenting themselves. Wong sees this as an effort to forget by reconstructing the past. The narrative tension is creating by combining personal experience and historical events. Ishiguro’s narrator retains primary control throughout and covers up by revealing. Etsuko is able to forget the pain of Keiko’s death by remembering the pain of the past in Nagasaki. Wong points out Etsuko’s memories are selective and Etsuko herself says memory can be unreliable. The narrator is both telling and veiling. There is an uneasy relation between private and public contexts as well as between individual and historical contexts. Each narrator returns to the past to make amends for the present. The remembering is an effort to displace the shame of an unalterable past. The second part of Wong’s essay focuses on the first person narrative strategy. She also notes a similar use of memory in Ishiguro’s next two novels An Artist of the Floating World and The Remains of the Day. The first person narrative and Etsuko’s effort to reshape memories reveal the “tension between individual consciousness and the historical circumstances (131).” Wong sees the content of Etsuko’s story as an inversion of memory. The dreaded past reappears because of her desire to forget the shame associated with past events. Keiko’s madness is subtly linked to the madness Etsuko experienced after the bomb. Etsuko’s condition was directly related to historical events. She controls the memories, we only hear what she wants us to hear, and she only remembers what she is willing to remember. She uses it. She reconstructs her world and herself through the help of her memories. Okata-San validates her by saying, “we were all shocked, those of us who were left”(58). We only get Etsuko’s version of what people said. She uses the story of Sachiko and Mariko to explain the missing period of Keiko’s upbringing in England and how/why Keiko eventually took her own life. The third part of Wong’s essay emphasizes the historical setting. She sees Sachiko’s disdain for Mrs. Fujiwara’s noodle shop as a rejection of the rebuilding. Sachiko has lost all her family in Tokyo but also refuses an easy life with her Uncle. Wong sees the bomb and reconstruction as altering the fabric of Japanese society; it has the middle generation blaming the previous one at the expense of the next generation. The silences also emphasize the unspeakable horror of what happened to so many innocents in Nagasaki, which itself was a repetition of Hiroshima. Keiko’s death parallels the meaningless loss of so many lives and the resulting destruction of families. [This article was at times difficult to read and used references that were even more complex but it also provided some interesting interpretations. Sachiko’s actions seemed only selfish to me but Wong provided a context where the aftermath of the war partially explained them. She heavily emphasized this first person narrative uses the individual’s memory in an effort to heal a shameful past and how this individual is inseparably tied to a particular historical context.  B.N.]

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