The Remains of the Day: Flashbacks 6 key examples

While the present-day moments of the story occur over far less time than the flashbacks, they also cover much more geographical ground. The narrator, Stevens, journeys across England to see a former coworker named Miss Kenton. His experiences of the English countryside and unplanned interactions with common Britons are contrasted with his time in Darlington Hall, where he saw incredibly important men during influential meetings but did not do much else besides work for his employer, Lord Darlington.

The novel's setting—and recall that setting includes both the time and place a piece of literature occurs in—is one of the most important drivers of the plot and the philosophical questions that Stevens considers. The Remains of the Day explores, from the viewpoint of one man, large societal shifts in England such as the decline of the aristocracy. It also grapples with the merits and constraints of democracy, the appeal of fascism and totalitarianism, the meaning of a national identity, anti-Semitism, and a whole host of other questions that are not unique to the 20th century or England, but come into focus through the book's setting. It's clear that Stevens loves England, and the novel itself often reads like a celebration of England's working class, landscape, and traditions, even as it often implicitly offers Stevens's patriotism and loyalty to Darlington up for critique. 

Stevens explains that for some reason, the more intimate dining room, which would normally be used for a dinner of only two, was not available that day. As a result, Darlington and his guest had to sit in a much larger dining room, at an excessively large table. Candles and the fire cast a "pool of light," but the rest of the room is in shadows. Stevens, trying as always to be thoughtful, stands back in the shadows to make the men feel as if they're not being watched. But if the visual imagery wasn't dark enough, Stevens also adds the sonic imagery: his own footsteps echoing toward the table as he approaches. It reads like an unsettling dining experience. Perhaps that mood is appropriate because Darlington spends much of the dinner dejectedly talking about the economic ruin in Germany. In fact, it's Darlington's sympathy for the Germans that leads him to take up their cause, trust their leaders, and ultimately fall from grace when people begin to associate him with the Nazis. 

Stevens explains how his father fell in front of Darlington and guests. As a result of this and other mistakes, Darlington asks Stevens to demote his own father. His father reacts emotionlessly, but later, Miss Kenton sees him retracing his steps over the pathway he had stumbled on, as if practicing or trying to discover where he tripped. She calls Stevens over so he can see.

There is a lot of significance in this scene. Two noteworthy things are Miss Kenton's involvement and the simile that Miss Kenton chose. Miss Kenton doesn't always like Stevens's father or his work, but she's taken enough notice of him to know that this behavior has significance. It seems she even knows why. She also knows Stevens should see his father pacing, if only because he so infrequently gets insight into Stevens senior's inner world. Kenton also remembers this event well enough to mention it in her letter to Stevens, which she wrote years later. Her simile, which makes Stevens senior's pacing into a search for a jewel, also illustrates that she understands what a crucial moment this is: the older Stevens searches for something precious, an ability or youth he once had but has since lost.

First, note that it's evening, a time of day with significant symbolic implications throughout the novel. Although those implications aren't drawn out until the book's conclusion, readers can nevertheless connect the final scene of the novel to earlier scenes. Ishiguro emphasizes the time of day by describing the long shadows, the orange light, and the darkness throughout the rest of the house. Perhaps the reason it's evening here—besides that time of day generating beautiful imagery—is because Stevens's father is coming to the end of his career. He may or may not know this, and he might try to prevent it, but this end will happen all the same. 

Readers might also notice the times when Stevens sees Miss Kenton not clearly or entirely, but instead as a silhouette, a figure, or a shadow. He also sometimes only knows Miss Kenton is present somewhere because of a light on in her room, or because of her footsteps. Reasonable readers could differ on the significance of this, or whether it has significance at all. Plausible interpretations might link this motif to Stevens's unwillingness to form a closer connection with the housekeeper.

This flashback, like most of the memories Stevens writes about, takes place during the interwar period. World War II was yet to begin, but the fascist regimes that eventually fought the Allied Forces were already burgeoning. When Darlington references Germany and Italy, which he sees as having solved their problems "by acting," he refers to Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy, two fascist dictatorships. While Darlington clearly doesn't care for the Bolsheviks, who ran Russia during this time period, he likewise appreciates their staunch and anti-democratic control over their country. Likewise, Franklin D. Roosevelt was a U.S. president who, despite largely being considered one of the best presidents in American history, has also been criticized for growing presidential power and staying in office for longer than was the norm. In all of these examples, what Darlington appreciates is the movement from a more democratic (and, he says, cautious) government toward one that vests more power in a single person or ideological system to the detriment of other beliefs. Darlington metaphorically says Germany and Italy "have set their houses in order," and Roosevelt has taken "a few bold steps," both euphemistic ways of describing these shifts in governing norms.

Darlington goes on to use a metaphor to illustrate his point against democracy:

If your house is on fire, you don’t call the household into the drawing room and debate the various options for escape for an hour, do you?

Cite this Quote

Metaphorically, Darlington compares England's situation to a house on fire. Although the wise thing would be to act quickly, in his view, democracy has forced England to pause at this crisis point and "debate the various options" to the point of paralysis. Although he doesn't make it clear, Darlington's "house on fire" is likely the Great Recession, an economic collapse that began in the United States but quickly spread to Europe. 

"Out of his depth" is a common English-language idiom used to mean someone cannot handle the situation they're in. Here, however, Cardinal expands it into a metaphor. With his association with and promotion of the Germans, Darlington is "swimming further and further out," possibly much further than he can survive. It's not clear what Cardinal thinks will happen to Darlington if he gets lost in these "deep waters," but it won't be good. Although Stevens says he trusts Darlington's judgement, Cardinal tries again to convince him of the danger:

I remember this American chap, even drunker than I am now, he got up at the dinner table in front of the whole company. And he pointed at his lordship and called him an amateur. Called him a bungling amateur and said he was out of his depth. Well, I have to say, Stevens, that American chap was quite right.

Cite this Quote

Here Cardinal references Mr. Lewis, the American who tried to conspire against Darlington during the "unofficial conference" held at Darlington Hall to discuss an upcoming meeting about lessening the burden of the Treaty of Versailles. In Stevens's telling, Mr. Lewis was duplicitous, but Cardinal seems to think Lewis was correct—politics shouldn't be Darlington's realm, because he's a "bungling amateur" who does not have the skill level necessary to handle the sensitive situations he's in, just as a poor swimmer could fail to have the skill to return from the water they swam into.