A symbiosis of memory and identity in the selected works of Kazuo Ishiguro

Abstract

Kazuo Ishiguro, the Nobel laureate from Japan, has nevertheless displayed the gulf between memory and the representation of memory in his illustrious literary oeuvre. His literary works display how memories and stories serve as the windows through which people understand and get understood. The enriched mindscape both makes and unmakes memories. Memory is a powerful tool transcending the limitations of human condition as perceived in contemporary literature. Despite the temporal or spatial distance, it enables the past appear once again I the present. It not only recalls, but reorganizes the past and presents in the present. However Memory in Ishiguro's works acts as a point of convergence of the past, present and future. This juncture of assimilation both creates and recreates the self-identity which is never a constant entity, but a Flux and flex whose only constant is change. Nevertheless the equation between Memory and identity is like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to butterfly.