UNSPOKEN TRAUMA AND EMOTİONAL REPRESSİON İN THE REMAİNS OF THE DAY BY KAZUO ISHİGURO

Abstract

This essay examines Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day's emotional repression and silent tragedy, focusing on Stevens' psychological and cultural traits. It claims that readers overlook Stevens's extreme duty and professionally shield him from deeply personal difficulties like his father's death, his unresolved affections for Miss Kenton, and his severe disillusionment with Lord Darlington. The thesis uses Freud's defense mechanisms to claim that Stevens' emotional remoteness and rigorous social duties are unconscious ways to avoid mental anguish. Stevens' unreliable narrative and silences reveal that Ishiguro's realist work, while sympathetic to British life, criticizes the British class system and stoicism. The essay examines Stevens' suppression of post-war Britain, revealing how the aristocracy and values of service and dedication came apart, like Stevens. Ishiguro's use of quiet and subtext to show the main character's agony is examined using psychoanalytic and narrative methods. It concludes that The Remains of the Day is a story about failure and the cost of following social norms and not facing one's feelings. This article reinterprets Ishiguro's work through trauma, quiet, and identity. It illustrates how the book still applies to mental health, emotional labor, and cultural perceptions.