PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION AND UNRELIABLE NARRATION IN KAZUO ISHIGURO’S ‘THE REMAINS OF THE DAY’

Annotatsiya

Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘The Remains of the Day’ (1989) presents a complex study of memory, identity, emotional repression, and self-deception through the retrospective narration of Stevens, an English butler. The novel’s psychological depth is created not primarily through direct descriptions of the protagonist’s emotions, but through the narrative strategies by which he reconstructs his past. This article examines how first-person narration, selective memory, self-justification, emotional concealment, narrative gaps, and the tension between stated and implied meanings contribute to the construction of Stevens as a psychologically complex and unreliable narrator. Drawing on narratological and psychoanalytic perspectives, the study argues that Stevens’s unreliability is not simply a matter of factual inaccuracy. Rather, it emerges from his limited self-knowledge, professional ideology, emotional repression, and persistent attempt to preserve a coherent image of himself. His narrative gradually reveals a conflict between the identity he consciously constructs and the experiences that challenge it. The article concludes that Ishiguro uses unreliable narration as a central technique for representing psychological complexity, allowing readers to understand Stevens not only through what he says, but also through what he avoids, suppresses, and leaves unsaid.