Magnifying Memories: Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans - Page 3
© Pamela St. Clair
The surreal aspect of these war scenes threatens to move the narrative to the level of the absurd. Is Christopher so self-absorbed that reality has totally eluded him at this point? Various elements contribute to the outrageous quality, such as a Chinese commander’s willingness to leave his soldiers behind to accompany Christopher to the house in which he believes his parents are still being held hostage after all of these years, Christopher’s incredulity over the commander's initial hesitation to put aside his country's concerns for Christopher's personal ones, Christopher’s unflinching belief that his parents are still alive and his refusal to contemplate an alternative possibility, and his dream-like reunion with Akira, who has been badly wounded and whom Christopher literally stumbles over in the war zone through which he trespasses in his manic search for his parents. Of course, memory is surreal at times too, and Christopher is narrating the past from a distant present. Perhaps events did not quite unfold as he suggests. Perhaps he simply wanted the wounded soldier to be his friend Akira. Like memory, it’s not perfectly clear.
The novel’s layered narrative can sometimes be confusing, yet it mirrors the layers through which memory often peels back, covers up, and peels back again, highlighting different aspects each time a level reveals itself anew. The novel opens in July of 1930 as Christopher recalls his first days in London in 1923 after finishing school. However, the story really opens in 1958 when Christopher is retired and is recounting the events of 1930 in which he recounts the events of 1923. Within the chronological markers that situate chapters, Christopher moves back and forth between his childhood in Shanghai and his adulthood, and memory and the present eventually collide.
In the end, all illusions are shattered. Gratifying twists in the plot are revealed, one of which is unmistakably reminiscent of Pip’s delusion smashing discovery at the end of Dickens’s Great Expectations. Like Pip, Christopher discovers that much of his entire existence has been built upon illusion and deception. In the end, Pip’s words may equally be Christopher’s, “But that poor dream, as I once used to call it, has all gone by.” The dream has receded into memory where perception depends on how far or how near from sight the magnifying glass is held.
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