Dignity and Trauma

Introduction

Dignity is the term which refers to the quality of being worthy of esteem or respect. Trauma on the other hand is the word refers to any physical damage to the body caused by violence or accident or fracture etc. These word were and are extensively used in English language and literature in every genre of writing. In this connection, this study is going to compare the development of the words dignity and trauma across two different texts. The study will discuss the development of the word dignity in “The Remains of the Day” written by Kazuo Ishiguro and the development of word trauma in “Return of the Soldier” written by Rebecca West.

Discussion and Analysis

The Remains of the Day

Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day is an intimate portrayal of an utterly English butler through his methodical ruminations on the subjects of greatness and dignity. One significant strand of the myth which Ishiguro attempts to subvert is the notion of benevolent paternalism which was invoked to legitimate the deployment of power by the British ruling class, both at home and abroad (Hawthorne, pp. 45-99). The coercive terms of this myth are exposed ironically through the narration of Stevens, whose failure to find personal fulfillment is directly proportional to his commitment to the ideal of the faithful servant. The absurdity of this role is emphasized through its incommensurability with the story Stevens is relating: against the progressive narrative forces of love and history, Stevens's insistence on the value of "dignity" seems, at best, irrelevant and, at worst, reactionary (Morrow, pp. 85-136).

Dignity, according to Stevens, is an explicitly English quality, reflected not just in the truism that "butlers only ... exist in England" (43), but in the countryside itself, in the "lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart" (28); specifically, Stevens suggests, England's beauty is "set apart" from the "unseemly demonstrativeness" of places like Africa and America (29). Indeed it is suggested that England's ability to confer order on these more unruly parts of the world was strongly predicated on the dignity of its serving classes (cited in Morrow, pp. 85-136).

This dignity is illustrated, for Stevens, in an anecdote related by his father, about a butler who has gone with his employer to India. One day he finds a tiger under the dining room table, and, after discreetly shooting it, he informs his employer, who is entertaining guests that dinner will be served at the usual time (Morrow, pp. 85-136). The darker implications of this classic story of British dignity in the face of colonial disorder are brought out in another story Stevens tells about his father's own career as a butler. Shortly after the death of his elder son in the Anglo-Boer War during "a most un-British attack on civilian Boer settlements," Stevens Sr. is forced to valet for the general who led the campaign, a job he carries out with, in Stevens's eyes, the utmost "dignity" (Rice and Kazuo, pp. ...