The trip

In The Remains of the Day

by the English writer Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro is an English writer of Japanese descent. He was

born in Nagasaki in 1954. Then his family moved to Britain in
1960 and intended to return home after a few years, so they
made sure to bring him up in accordance with Japanese
customs and traditions. But the family settled in Britain. Thus,
the son grew up between two cultures and two worlds. All his
knowledge about Japan was derived from English culture and
his own parents, not from direct contact with a broad cultural
community. He did not visit Japan until 1987, after he released
two novels, both about Japan, and they are "Pale View of Hills"
1982 and "An Artist from the floating World" 1986, both of
which are about Japan in the writer's imagination. He believes
that his writing is less complicated, because he invents his
stories based on impressions rather than on facts and lived
reality. Ishiguro did not start literary writing until his dreams of
being a musician were shattered. But he used the image of
pianist in his novel The Unconsoled.
As for The Remains of the Day, which is the author's third
novel, it won the Booker Prize, was translated into several
languages and was a bestseller for five years. It was adapted
into a successful movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma
Thompson and won 7 Oscars.
He published the novel "The Remains of the Day" in 1989,
which is an intersection between individual memory and
national history through the protagonist Stevens, who believes
that he served humanity when he harnessed all his experience
and competence to serve the English Lord Darlington. The
novel begins in 1956, when the new American owner of
Darlington Hall, Mister "Farraday", proposes to Stevens, the
butler in this palace, to take a trip in the beautiful English
countryside. While Stevens himself says that he saw and knew
much through his service within the walls of this palace that
those who lived abroad did not know. he says, "It was one of
the advantages that my field of work afforded me that I saw
the best of England between these walls and over the years"
without telling Mr. Faraday. But He thought to himself and
reversed his decision when he discusses his employer's
proposal to lend him his car and he will pay for petrol so that
his servant can have a trip across the English countryside. He
accepts this for the sake of duty, as he claims for himself, until
he meets Miss Kenton and invites her to work in the palace
again, after she indicated some conflict between her and her
husband, and hinted that she misses her days in the palace
when she was managing it years ago. When Stevens begins his
journey by car, he begins a tormenting journey in memory. In
this journey, everything that is questionable will begin within
him, the meaning of his life he lived in isolation from everything
except his job, his service to the English Lord, and that was he
as great as Stevens himself thought. The very idea of the trip
was taken by Ishiguro to tell us that the more the protagonist
moved away from Darlington Palace, the closer he came to
understanding his life there. The journey of remembrance and
flashback moves between travel, thinking about his profession,
the meaning of dignity and the miserable present of Darlington
Palace, where Stevens tries to reduce the number of servants
of this luxurious mansion to four people to serve the new
American owner, after he was chief of servants that numbered
up to 17 and 22 at other times, his memories during his service
to the Lord and his influence in the twenties, and the tensions
and anxieties of the thirties.
In his writings, Ishiguro uses memories, their aftermath, and
reactions to depict the circumstances that embody his
characters; Stevens in this novel is a carefully drawn character
from the part of the writer who highlights the advantages and
disadvantages of a stoic, conservative character. Steven is a
sober, professional person who tries to maintain order,
discipline and an excellent level of service in his employer's
palace, where these mighty efforts outweigh the shortcomings
in his personal life. He loves Miss Kenton and leaves her to
marry another man. When his father died while serving in the
same palace, he could not leave his work and be next to his
father in his last moments so that he would not be accused of
negligence in his work.
In Stevens's journey through the past, he discovers his mistakes
in his previous judgments about the greatness of the Lord, who
discovers after reviewing multiple situations for him that he
himself attended that he was not that great. And perhaps on
his journey he wants to correct the mistakes of the past and
recover some lost time for going to touch Kenton and trying to
get her back. But at the end of the journey, he meets her and
finds that she has regained her marriage, while she tells him
that she has always fallen out with her husband because of her
old love for him, who left her to go to marry without asking her
to stay or confessing his love to her. But she discovers during
her journey in life that she too eventually loved her husband
and leaves him after the meeting to return to her life. He sits to
watch the lights on a bench facing the sea and hears the shouts
of joy in the lights and the coming of the night. The old man
who sits next to him tells him without noticing that the evening
is the best part of the day for many, the part they wait for all
day. At the end of his journey, he begins by thinking to himself
and acknowledging that the evening is the best part of the day
and that he should make use of what is left of the day, or of
life. There is no point in going back to the past and blaming
ourselves if our lives have not gone as smoothly as we would
have liked. Rather, he reviewed himself in the importance of
joking with the new American master, as dignity and poise
were the hallmarks of the unique butler. .

Here, Ishiguro arrives at the essential meaning of the journey.

We discover ourselves during the journey, not when we arrive.