Title: The Remains of the Day
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Published: 1989
Pages: 258 pages
Structure: Prologue and seven sections, spanning a six-day journey
What is greatness? What is dignity? And what is a life well lived?
These are the questions that Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro asks in his beautifully restrained novel The Remains of the Day.
This is a gently brutal novel. The narrative is understated. There is no dramatic climax and very little obvious conflict. But I reached the end of it heartbroken over the tragedy of an ageing man who realises that the purpose to which he has devoted his life may have been misguided.
Tragedy, at its best, is cautionary. It compels us to look inward and ask whether we have made the same errors as the protagonist. I reached the end of this story asking myself whether I had misplaced my priorities, and whether I had missed things of importance while pursuing things that mattered less.
Stevens is a butler at Darlington Hall. He aspires to be a great one, and has enjoyed many hours of discussion in the servants’ hall about what it is to be a great butler. He can even name some of the greats of his time, such as “Mr Marshall of Charleville House, or Mr Lane of Bridewood”. He considers the concept of greatness in broader terms and decides that a great butler has dignity. It is this dignity that he strives for.
But that leads him to another question. What is dignity?
Stevens believes that it “has to do crucially with a butler’s ability not to abandon the professional being he inhabits”. In other words, he never lets his personal feelings intrude when he is doing his job. He remains detached. This, to Stevens, is a great virtue.
Stevens also claims that this dignity is complemented by the greatness of his employer. The best employers are those who spend their time improving the world and doing grand things. By serving such an employer with dignity, Stevens believes he too is helping to make the world a better place.
When Darlington Hall is eventually sold to an American, Stevens remains as butler to its new owner, Mr Farraday. Farraday encourages him to take some time off, lends him his car, and Stevens sets off on a motoring holiday through the English countryside. The journey provides the framework for the novel, but Stevens is constantly drawn back into memories of his years serving Lord Darlington.
Gradually, we discover that Lord Darlington’s concern for Germany after the First World War left him vulnerable to Nazi manipulation, and that some of the supposedly world-changing meetings Stevens was so proud to serve were being used to advance German interests in Britain.
There is an even more disturbing example of Stevens’ unquestioning loyalty. Lord Darlington orders him to dismiss two Jewish housemaids simply because they are Jewish. Miss Kenton, the housekeeper, is appalled and threatens to resign. Stevens himself is uncomfortable with the decision, but carries out the order because he believes it is not his place to question his employer.
That, I think, is one of the great flaws in Stevens’ idea of dignity. He has surrendered not only his emotions, but some of his moral responsibility. If Lord Darlington is a great man pursuing great things, then Stevens believes his duty is simply to serve him well.
We also learn how Stevens’ aged father joins the staff at Darlington Hall and becomes seriously ill. One evening, while an important international conference is taking place downstairs, his father lies dying upstairs.
Stevens does not let personal matters intrude upon his professional life. He continues serving the guests while his father dies.
What disturbed me most was the way Stevens remembers the incident. He does not describe it primarily with grief. He remembers having maintained his professionalism and says that he recalls the evening with “a large sense of triumph”.
I shook my head in disbelief.
His father was dying in a nearby room, yet Stevens regards his ability to continue serving dinner as evidence that he had achieved the dignity he had spent his life pursuing.
The saddest part of the story, though, happens during the road trip when Stevens visits Miss Kenton, his former colleague and the housekeeper at Darlington Hall.
Stevens reminisces about their years together and about several awkward but intimate evenings when they would meet over a cup of cocoa and discuss the affairs of the household. What becomes painfully obvious to the reader is something Stevens refuses to acknowledge: Miss Kenton has feelings for him, and he has feelings for her.
But Stevens is so committed to maintaining the professional being he inhabits that he will not allow himself to recognise what is happening between them.
Years later, Miss Kenton has married and become Mrs Benn. When Stevens finally visits her, she tells him that during unhappy moments in her marriage she sometimes finds herself imagining “a life I might have had with you, Mr Stevens.”
For perhaps the first time, Stevens allows himself to admit what this means:
Indeed – why should I not admit it? – at that moment, my heart was breaking.
And then, almost immediately, he retreats once again behind politeness, professionalism and dignity.
That line broke my heart too.
Later, sitting on a pier as evening approaches, Stevens begins to understand something even more devastating. He tells a stranger that he gave Lord Darlington the very best he had to give. But Lord Darlington, whatever his failures, at least chose his own path and made his own mistakes.
Stevens did not.
He trusted Lord Darlington’s judgement and devoted his life to serving him. Now he asks himself:
Really – one has to ask oneself – what dignity is there in that?
For me, this is what makes the story so powerful.
All of us want to have purpose in our lives, and we gain meaning from aspiring to worthwhile goals. But how devastating would it be to reach the end of a life and realise that your purpose was misguided? How sad to finally see that something deeply important was right in front of you, but you missed it?
And yet Ishiguro does not quite leave Stevens there.
While he is sitting on the pier, a stranger talks to him about the pleasure of evening, and tells him that for many people it is the best part of the day.
And suddenly the title becomes important.
Stevens may have wasted much of his life, but the day is not yet over. There are still the remains of it.
He decides that when he returns to Darlington Hall he will make a greater effort to learn the art of bantering with Mr Farraday. Throughout the novel Stevens has struggled with bantering, with humour, with intimacy and with the ordinary warmth that passes between people.
I’m not entirely sure how hopeful Ishiguro intends this to be. Perhaps Stevens has finally understood that human connection matters. Or perhaps he has simply turned bantering into yet another professional skill he needs to master in order to become a better butler.
Either way, the possibility remains that something can still be salvaged from the remains of his day.
This is a sobering novel. It’s truly great.
It reminds me to live well, to question my assumptions often, and not to become so devoted to a purpose that I fail to notice the life happening around me.
If you want to live a good life, I recommend it.
