“New People”: Memory, Leisure, and Identity at the British Seaside in Last Orders and the Remains of the Day
Date
2025-06-23
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
Type
Thesis
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
In both The Remains of the Day (1989) and Last Orders (1996), Kazuo Ishiguro and Graham Swift tie explorations of memory, interpersonal relationships, and individual identity to journeys to the sea. To articulate how their characters view the seaside not only as a mode of “recuperation and liberation from the stresses of daily life” (Baranowski and Furlough 5), but also as an opportunity for self-improvement and even reinvention, Ishiguro and Swift each rely on tropes in which destinations such as Weymouth and Margate are synonymous with decay and disappointment. I argue that the authors draw upon a literary tradition where seaside vacation destinations are associated with disillusionment, as both as both writers employ narrators whose identities are yoked to their careers and whose journeys expose the highly subjective stories that they construct about themselves in relation to work, home, and leisure. Using historical analyses of British seaside culture to illuminate the traditions that Ishiguro and Swift each reference, I focus on the authors’ uses of internal monologue to suggest that, in their hands, illusions about leisure, personal relationships, and professional identity are exposed and interrogated through journeys to the sea. Edward Engelberg’s conceptualization of the “unlived life” (i) allows for analysis of the overlapping functions of memory, storytelling, and identity in both novels. While Ishiguro’s butler, Mr. Stevens, sidesteps the implications of his life so fastidiously that he has no identity outside of his work, Swift’s many narrators seem continually trapped by narratives about the people they could have been. In each case, the promise of growth and contentment through holiday travel to the sea remains illusory, as both Stevens and Swift’s chorus of narrators remain locked in a cycle of remembering.
Description
Keywords
20th Century British Literature, English, Literature, Graham Swift, Kazuo Ishiguro, Seaside Towns in Literature, Leisure Culture, Memory, Narration
Citation
Degree
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Department
English
Program
English