The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro - Reviews of novel stories

There are people who pursue riches in life, some are looking for tranquility and perhaps few people seek perfect service to employers without the intention of accumulating wealth. Seeing this book from the outside shows me a little guessing what Ishiguro wants to say in his writing. I searched for a little clue from the synopsis behind the cover and found that this book tells of a butler named Stevens who worked at Darlington Hall with great dedication, success and was called dignity and extraordinary but lost some of the things he sacrificed including a woman named Miss Kenton . Does this book then become the story of "chasing back lost love"? I honestly thought that way, but what I found was completely different.

Stevens had just changed employers, from Lord Darlington to an American named Mr. Farraday. On one occasion, his new employer gave Stevens time for a vacation and toured the UK using Mr. Ford's. Farraday. Holiday was one of the things that had never been a priority in the life of Stevens who had 35 years dedicated himself to Lord Darlington, but because a letter from Miss Kenton arrived a few days later, Stevens changed his mind and grabbed this opportunity to vacation while visiting Miss Kenton and offered him back to work at Darlington Hall because based on Miss Kenton's letter, apparently she had separated from her husband. The journey begins. As Stevens' journey begins, begin each of the memories described in this book. The memories raised by Stevens and conveyed to the reader were his daily life during his work at Darlington Hall decades earlier. The time when Lord Darlington hosted and welcomed the world's most important people, together with them set the direction of England through discussions and debates around the world war two. On this occasion Stevens was always present as a butler. In relation to being a butler, Stevens evaluates his question of "What is a great butler?" which then connects it with the word "dignity". In the context of Steven, his dignity is interpreted as "not leaving his professional figure for his personal figure with any provocation", in other words he puts the perfect self-control under any circumstances, the job has always been foremost. This evoked a section about his dying father at Darlington Hall as Stevens was busy hosting the ongoing confederate guests. Even when his father was declared dead on the top floor of the house, Stevens did not leave his duties as a butler, suppress his emotions, stay friendly to every guest he was serving. Though I felt that Stevens' self-control was great, for some reason at the same time I questioned his conscience.

There are people who use logic and others who rely heavily on feelings. When logic prevails, there must be parts of feelings that are sacrificed, and vice versa. This is what is clearly illustrated in Stevens's memory of his father and also of Miss Kenton. Not only stop there, Stevens also recall other memories to contemplate which also became a reflection for the readers of this book. Stevens not only described the situation in which he worked, but also his assessment of everyone he met. He greatly praised the wisdom of Lord Darlington and he trusted what his master believed, but in the end he also evaluated how a wise man could take the wrong step. It is interesting to read the description given by Stevens about the differences between the English and other Europeans. Honor has always been a label attached to the English, as bad as any circumstances, they should not leave the honor that Steven identifies with emotion and excessive oppression of opponents and other characteristics that are always directly related to the loss of self-control. There's no way I can explain everything one by one, because so many simple things are reviewed with detail and patience by Ishiguro so at the beginning, I feel this book is very slow and provoke drowsiness. But before long, I was used to the way of telling Ishiguro I finally liked and unconsciously I had arrived at the last page. While reading this book, Ishiguro managed to get me to rethink my understanding of something, because it really affected what I could see and did not.

Until the last sheet of this book, I did not find the theme of "chasing back lost love" that had been thought of in the beginning. And it seems the synopsis of this book is somewhat misleading to me, Stevens and Miss Kenton seem to be the main topics in this book and the thoughtful theme at the beginning seems to fit the synopsis described. But at the last page, I realized, not easy to give a synopsis for a book like this. How to summarize a book that contains contemplation of the past. Because it is not fitting to blame the wisdom of the misleading synopsis, or the assumption once again has misled me. In the end, I'm also very glad to have given this book a chance, because to be honest I had time to read this book many times and always stop at the first ten pages due to a very slow tempo.

As for the love story, there is, of course, a section where Stevens reflects on his past with Miss Kenton and realizes some of the things he has missed. But I do not think this is the main thing in this book. Hikmah translations are easy to understand, although there are some words that I do not understand as to why in a house there are called jongos and servants, there is the deputy head of the jongos and there is a butler, whether it should be the same or indeed different.

The Remains of the Day is Ishiguro's third novel and was the winner of Man Booker Prize in 1989. The book has also been screened on the big screen by Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.