Every hit worker may have had a purpose: "Do you want to jump ship?" "Do you want to keep doing this job?" These questions are agonized at times.
Doing the same job for decades, some people will find it difficult, some people will find it boring, but some people will be willing to devote all their energy to the same job because they are particularly passionate.
This kind of life that takes a job to the extreme, Ishiguro Kazuo compiled it into a fictional novel, "The Long Day Will End".
Kazuo Ishiguro was a Japanese-British novelist.
In 2017, he won the Nobel Prize for "excavating the abyss hidden under our illusory connection with the world with its great emotional power".
"The Long Day Will End" is The third novel of Kazuo Ishiguro, which won the Booker Award in 1989, and the Academy Award-nominated "Farewell to the Sentient Sky" is based on the film adaptation of "The Long Day Will End".
The novel is narrated in the first person with the memories and feelings of the protagonist Stevens, and the reader does not have a God perspective to understand the whole thing, but with Stevens' cognition and perspective to understand the development of the story. Although it is impossible to directly understand the mood of other characters, the reader is more able to appreciate Stevens' situation and mood.
"The Long Day Will End" tells the story of Stevens, who has served in Darlington House, a traditional British aristocratic mansion for more than thirty years, and drives alone to the southwest to find Miss Kenton, the housekeeper who once worked with him in the house, hoping that she will return to work in the face of scarce staff and scarce resources.
During the six-day journey, Stevens drove to enjoy the scenery on the one hand, and expressed the environmental changes in Britain after the end of world war II in the scenery of nature. He also listened to some villagers who had not received much education to express their views on the current situation when he was spending the night.
After World War II, the Empire could not return to its former glory, which made the people begin to doubt the entire British system, so even the lowest people participated in the election, trying to change the current situation and let the people live a happy life again.
This reminds Stevens of a noble friend of Lord Darlington who deliberately asked Stevens some tricky current political questions while he was still serving Lord Darlington. It is an exaggeration to express the former upper class aristocrats' belief that it was extremely ridiculous to entrust the affairs of the state to some uneducated people.
Through the contrast between reality and memory of two small everyday things, to express the historical pattern of Britain's gradual development from an aristocratic society to a democratic country before and after the two world wars, it can be seen that Ishiguro's writing is very clever.
Stevens, on the other hand, devoted his life to the profession of butler, and spent his life chasing to become a great butler.
An official butler organization in The Long Day Is Over called the Hayes Society, which they believed was that one of the necessary conditions for joining the association was "stewards who served the eminent court," a condition that Made Stevens feel outdated. Rather than an employer with deep assets, Stevens wanted to serve "the gentleman who is advancing human progress."
He classified himself as a more idealistic generation, because times are changing and ideas are progressing. Judging from the differences in the thinking of the two generations of butlers, it is not difficult to see that the ideological liberation movement in Europe is subtly influencing the thinking of many people and breaking the shackles brought by old ideas.
And Stevens, who had this goal, served Lord Darlington for more than thirty years, did he think that Darlington's mansion was a mansion that fit his rationality, and was Lord Darlington a gentleman who promoted human progress?
Stevens' memories of Lord Darlington are hidden most of the time, and this is the strongly subjective narrative that a first-person novel can bring. There is a weakness in this narrative, the reader cannot know the whole picture of the matter, but only from Stevens's perception.
When someone denigrates Lord Darlington, Stevens will complain about lord, believing that the people's evaluation of him is not true, that they do not know the real Lord.
Stevens obeyed all the Orders of the Lord unconditionally, even if it was unfair. When Lord Darlington was about to dismiss the two Jewish maids in the house, no matter how much Miss Kenton argued fiercely, Stevens decided to carry out the Lord's orders as if he were discussing what to eat for dinner, without any personal feelings.
Stevens said: "Lord Darlington was essentially a good man, and to this day I am proud to dedicate my best years to serving such a man." It can be seen that Stevens admired and admired the Lord.
But when asked now, Stevens has many times denied that he once served Lord Darlington.
Kazuo Ishiguro takes advantage of the subjectivity brought about by the first-person narrative to show Stevens' ambivalence that he knows that Lord has made a mistake but refuses to face it, which shows that Ishiguro Kazuo is very clever in both the conflict of the story and the shaping of the characters.
Stevens, who had served the Lord dutifully, did not take a look at his father when he died, nor did he face up to his feelings for Miss Kenton. In order to realize his ambition to become a great butler, he not only sacrificed family affection, but also missed love, he put all his energy into his work, and he did the butler to the extreme, which cannot be denied.
However, when history proves that what the Lord did was to aid and abett the abuse, he was wrong, stevens defended the Lord while escaping from reality.
He refused to admit that the Lord was wrong, as if he had confessed the Lord's mistake and would crush his ideal ambitions to pieces.
Kazuo Ishiguro said in an interview that he wrote "The Long Day Will End" to write about "how you wasted your life in order to achieve your career, and how you spent a lifetime on a personal level." ”
Stevens wasted his life in order to achieve the cause of stewardship, and wasted half his life because he always refused to express his admiration for Miss Kenton. This very moral butler, who never speaks ill of his employer and does not discuss the rights and wrongs of others, has become a completely tragic figure in ishiguro's pen.
I don't know whether to be happy or sorry for it.