“It’s rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir. But I suspect it comes down to not to removing
one’s clothing in public.”
This was what Mr. Stevens, the butler
of Darlington Hall, thought about dignity. Interestingly, nowadays, people are a bit too
eager to stripe openly. It is not sure
whether there are different interpretations of dignity, or different moral
values.
Mr. Stevens
Mr. Stevens was the story teller.
Actually the story was plain recall of
the remains of the days while our butler was preparing and then driving from Oxfordshire
to Weymouth in his 6-day-trip. He had
been the butler of Lord Darlington since before the First World War, until 3
years after the death of Lord Darlington, which was shortly after the Second
World War. The huge Darlington Hall was
sold to an American, Mr. Farraday. The
staff team was then instructed to be reduced from 18 to a mere 4. In the name of a precious holiday offered by
the new owner, Stevens drove to visit the Housekeeper, Miss Kenton, who had
left some 20 years ago when she got married. He received a letter from her hinting that she
was not happy and was still fond of the old days while she was working in
Darlington Hall. He was in the hope that
she could join his team again.
Stevens was a reserved, subtle
and strictly business person. He valued
his career and took pride in his professionalism. He saw the core value of a great Butler to be
his dignity. “Dignity has to do crucially with a butler’s ability not to abandon the
professional being he inhabits. Lesser
butlers will abandon their professional being for the private one at the least
provocation…. The great butlers are
great by virtue of their ability to inhabit their professional role and inhabit
it to the utmost; they will not be shaken out by external events, however
surprising, alarming or vexing. They
wear their professionalism as a decent gentleman will wear his suit; he will
not let ruffians or circumstance tear it off him in the public gaze.”
But Stevens was described as
taken his role too far, to the extent that he was constantly wearing his masks
and not just his suit. He overlooked his
father’s old age and continued to prescribed him much labor works as an
under-butler. W hen his father died of
stroke in his tiny room in Darlington Hall, Stevens was busy attending an important
function held by Lord Darlington concerning the post-First-World-War Germany. When Miss Kenton tried to show her affection
towards him, Steven just deflated it with criticism on her household work. Finally, he met Kenton, who was then Mrs.
Benn. She confessed to him that she was
actually in love with him and her agreeing to get married was just a gesture to
annoy him. However, after all these
years, she had accepted her life as such and she had no intention to leave her
husband and go back to work at the Darlington Hall again. Stevens only showed the slightest regret, and
decided to move on when he was watching the sun set.
Mr. Kazuo Ishiguro
Mr. Kazuo Ishiguro is the Nobel
Prize-winning writer this year. The Remains of the Days was written in
1989, the year I graduated. It was awarded
the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in the same year. Ishiguro was not writing on the romance between
Stevens and Kenton, as there was minimal. Kenton’s role was to highlight the character
of Stevens. The writer wanted to reflect
his worldview through the narration of Stevens, a rarity in the world. He wanted to talk about dignity, about democracy,
about universal suffrage, and about dictatorship in the background of the post
World War II period.
Here comes Lord Darlington, who
questioned the democracy system of Britain. “Democracy
is something for a bygone era. The world’s
far too complicated a place now for universal suffrage and such like. For endless members of parliament debating
things to a standstill…. The present
parliamentary system is compared to a committee of the mothers’ union
attempting to organize a war campaign…. People
are suffering. Ordinary, decent working
people are suffering terribly. Germany
and Italy have set their houses in order by acting. And so have the wretched Bolsheviks in their
own way, one supposes. Even President
Roosevelt, look at him, he’s not afraid to take a few bold steps on behalf of
his people. But look at us here,
Stevens. Year after year goes by, and
nothing gets better. All we do is argue
and debate and procrastinate. Any decent
idea is amended to ineffectuality by the time it’s gone half-way through the
various committees it’s obliged to pass through. The few people qualified to know what’s what
are talked to a standstill by ignorant people all around them.”
Then, Ishiguro, through Stevens,
said, “A butler’s duty is to provide good
service. It is not to meddle in the
great affairs of the nation. The fact
is, such great affairs will always be beyond the understanding of those such as
you and I, and those of us who wish to make our mark must realize that we best
do so by concentrating on what is within our realm; that is to say, by devoting
our attention to providing the best possible service to those great gentlemen
in whose hands the destiny of civilization truly lies…. If a butler is to be of any worth to anything
of anybody in life, there must surely come a time when he ceases his searching;
a time when he must say to himself: ‘This employer embodies all that I find
noble and admirable. I will hereafter
devote myself to serving him.’ This is
loyalty intelligently bestowed. What is
there ‘undignified’ in this? One is
simply accepting an inescapable truth: that the likes of you and I will never
be in a position to comprehend the great affairs of today’s world, and our best
course will always be to put our trust in an employer we judge to be wise and
honourable, and to devote our energies to the task of serving him to the best
of our ability…. It is hardly my fault
if his lordship’s life and work have turned out today to look, at best, a sad
waste- and it is quite illogical that I should feel any regret or shame on my
own account.”
