Idem and ipse identity helps manifest how Christopher Banks’s character is formed as well as how it is placed in and influenced by the past narrative and the way he remains the same or diverges from what is expected from the novel. Narrating the self makes it possible to understand one’s self in a detour. Through the narrative, idem and ipse identity of a person is revealed as a new way of comprehending how the self occurs and evolves.
In When We Were Orphans Kazuo Ishiguro creates his character Banks who is nostalgic about his childhood and driven by the mission to search for his lost idealized parents. To Ishiguro, the background of the novel is secondary to what the main character in it has tried to convey to readers. Ishiguro states that the main purpose of his novels is not to present what is faithful to what really happens, or how truthful his works are to the historical facts. To be more precise, he says: “I’m supposed to invent my own world . . . I look at a certain time in history, because I think it would help to bring out certain themes” (Wong 310). Indeed, the historical background is intended to manifest issues regarding the protagonist in the story. Ricoeur mentions that idem identity is possibly made up of the habit or character with minor changes that make a person identifiable. What is noticeable is that aside from the character that one is born with, culturally speaking
the identity of a person or a community is made up of these identifications with values, norms, ideals, models, and heroes, in which the person or the community recognizes itself. Recognizing oneself in contributes to recognizing oneself by. The identification with heroic figures clearly displays this otherness assumed as one’s own, but this is already latent in the identification with values which make us place a ‘cause’ above our own survival. (Oneself 121)
Aside from the above-mentioned acquired character, the idem identity generally means the “lasting dispositions by which a person is recognized” (121) which repeats almost the same itself. Thus idem identity, whether it is innate in or acquired by the self, makes Banks recognizable. On the one hand, due to the fact that Ishiguro is creating his protagonist as a person who has often wanted to preserve his childhood experience and memory, the idem identity is innate in this respect. On the other hand,
since When We Were Orphans alludes to how past detective stories or figures impact Banks’s traits, the idem identity of Banks can thus be acquired. It shows the traces left by the historical past of the Sherlock Holmes figure that makes Banks’s sense of nostalgia no longer merely pure and innocent as Ishiguro would have intended. In other words, Banks might be nostalgic in the sense of desiring to preserve the strong ability of his own as he wishes to appear representing his mother country’s
competence as a powerful nation. Glad to say, since Banks is depicted as a main character distorted by his obsession, When We Were Orphans is hardly a typical detective story like Conan Doyle’s. For one thing, while Sherlock Holmes reflects logical thinking, Banks is troubled by his nostalgia for and complacency about his childhood. Through narrative, mediating between idem and ipse identity, not only is Banks’s obsession with his childhood somewhat resolved, but also readers know the darker sense of nostalgia is being made fun of through Banks’s quixotic thinking in the narrative he writes about his self. Moreover, Banks knows about the false knowledge of his own concept and life story after his quest for the truth, allowing himself to let go some part of his sense of mission and the desire to save the world.
Ishiguro intends to make Banks a nostalgic person in the purest and most innocent way. In other words, the author simply would like to focus on Banks’s internal or emotional attempts to return to a better time in his personal past. Literally speaking, nostalgia is derived from the “Greek words nostos, or ‘return,’ and algos, or
‘pain’ . . . ‘an obsessive return that cherishes the pain of absence’ and as “an orientation toward the past that freezes past existence, preventing rather than
encouraging true investigation and dialectic’” (Shaffer, “Interview” 6). That is, though Banks is a detective who ought to almost always stay level-headed and logical, his nostalgic mind hinders himself from rationally dealing with his past and his parents’
case. The term nostalgia used to connote something evil of the English people, which they tend to turn a blind eye to: “It’s seen as something that skirts around the darker side of Empire—the glories and comforts and luxuries of Empire—without actually taking into account all of the true costs and true evils of Empire” (Shaffer, “Interview”
7). Furthermore, “[p]eddling nostalgia is seen as something that promotes our forgetting the suffering and exploitation of colonial times” (7). Although Ishiguro mainly focuses on Banks’s pure dwelling on his childhood period, it is difficult, however, to overlook the dark side of nostalgia. To resolve the two opposites of nostalgia, Banks needs to resort to the zigzag way of knowing his self. Through narrative, on the one hand, Christopher Banks, an obsessed protagonist by his own thinking and of his own world, is to rediscover the truth and make sense of the past.
On the other hand, being a detective and alluding to Sherlock Holmes once in a while, Banks himself is a parodying figure far away from the model detective, who
ultimately becomes aware that to save his parents and to long for contributions to humanity are irrelevant incidents and vain attempts.
Below is a brief introduction to the cultural background in the 19th century relating to Sherlock Holmes and people’s concept of childhood in that period, from which we may infer how Banks is unlikely to be a person who fits in perfectly with Britain’s ideal. Firstly, despite his fame as a detective, Banks is a character who digresses from the tradition, a person both an alien himself who used to provoke xenophobia in the past and an innocent person distinctly distorted by his obsession with his childhood and heroic fantasy. That is, Banks is unable to be like the
all-powerful Sherlock Holmes figure because, while Holmes usually tackles problems emanating from the returned expatriates, Banks himself is a troubled character who
returns to the Britain from a foreign land.18 In addition, Banks’s childhood experience in the past hints at the possible influence of 19th century childhood on him. Yet, it is unusual for him to be obsessed with childhood, since ideally, children of the era when the Sherlock Holmes stories prevail should get rid of childish thinking and behavior as soon as possible. Hence, the 19th century Sherlock Holmes figure and childhood are to be discussed so as to be compared with those of Banks’s.
The Sherlock Holmes figure is created in the 19th century when “expressions of anxiety about social regression and national decline were widespread” (Boehmer 33);
as a consequence, the mythical making of the grandiose and majestic narrative is most required. This is due to the fact that according to Abrams, “[t]he final decades of the [19th century] saw the apex of British imperialism, yet the cost of the empire became increasingly apparent in rebellions, massacres, and bundled wars” (Anthology 1052).
Though the empire is powerful, it nevertheless faces underlying possible crises. There were two inclinations in the late 19th century’s British Empire, “increasingly divided between irrational grandiosity on one hand, and fears of decline and decay on the other” (Simmons, “Chivalry”). Thus, the conquering feeling comes from the British Empire of which each member needs to “compel the Other’s recognition of him and, in the process, allow his own identity to become deeply dependent on his position as master. This enforced recognition from the Other in fact amounts to the European’s narcissistic self-recognition” (JanMohamed 19). Once the backward nations gradually become agitated and reactionary, particularly in the late 19th century, the British Empire’s mixed feelings are manifested in the tales about the famous character Sherlock Holmes.
18 Examples regarding Sherlock Holmes’s stories that reflect the ideas are provided as follows:
“The Gloria Scott, The Crooked Man,” The Sign of Four, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” “The Adventure of the Empty House,” The Hound of the Baskervilles (Simmons, “Chivalry”).
Indeed, as a character who is much celebrated around the time before and after the British Empire reached the peak of power, Sherlock Holmes was a household name in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Under the so-called “hyper-efficient surveillance of Holmes” (Fluet 182), Holmes embodies the “rational ‘intervention’ of the Victorian detective [who] can also serve to render the detective’s disciplinary professionalism complicit with surveillance over a specifically national imaginary”
(182).19 Since the people of the period in Britain are highly narcissistic, “imperial subjects are urgently needed to shore up the vulnerable grandiosity of the imperialist”
(Simmons, “Chivalry”). Holmes’s expertise together with his “surveillance over London serves as an automatic metaphor for surveillance over empire, enabling and reinforcing distinctions between national and colonized subjects” (Fluet 182). The image of the intelligent detective represented by Sherlock Holmes personifies a
“grandiose image of Britain.” In the meantime it also embodies those who used to make a living in the backward nations and now return to their home country, bringing back evil and terror which impair the nation’s perfectness and fautlessness. Thus, the Homles figure is created to help exhibit the empire’s “vulnerability to the shame and guilt that are washing into the country as a result of British activities abroad”
(Simmons, “Chivalry”).
Envisioned as a part of a splendid history of its own nation, the “grandiose self-image created by the British during the imperial period was the vision of the exalted mythic past” (Simmons, Narcissism 18). That is to say, in the creation of the boastful image of the imperialist kingdom along with the imagination regarding the medieval romance, the chivalry adventure is revoked. John M. MacKenzie explains
19 Holmes of the detective genre has the “explicit bringing-under-surveillance of the entire world of the narrative” (Miller 35).
that the “British imperial cult” brings about the “perverted” form of medieval chivalry in which “heroes from both the distant and recent past were assiduously promoted through children’s literature” (Imperialism 3). As Simmons points out, the chivalry adventure stories are so deeply rooted in British people’s mind that they seem to occupy a crucial position in their history that endlessly prevails and “[has] always been a part of English life” (Narcissism 18). In the nineteenth century, Holmes, treated as “a modern day knight, hungry for modern day adventure . . . seems to speak to a fear that the mundane minds of professionals are unequipped to protect England against the new and nearly fantastical menace washing in every day from a variety of bizarre lands and cultures” (Simmons, Narcissism 79). He is a character who is invented and becomes popular and much loved because there is time when the British people idealistically would like to be imaginatively take the role of the Holmes’s omnipotent position. This is due to the fact that “Holmes’ fantastic abilities and unfailing superiority guarantee eventual triumph over all challenges, an
unquestionable superiority that may have been so attractive precisely because it is an attitude the British fear they may be losing” (79). This is the myth most fitting for the desire to preserve the all-powerful empire. Ironically, Banks is not as omnipotent as he thinks that he can save the world. Instead, he cannot totally deal with his own foreignness in his home country in England, nor can he cope with his own domestic troubles. In fact, he is a character who is rather vulnerable, so that he gives up his desire to be a world savior eventually. As a result, he does not appear to be a mighty and potent model like Holmes.
As Banks’s self narration mainly centers around his childhood, it would be appropriate to discuss the general concept of the children and childhood in in the 19th century. Simmons observes that the middle class’s and the upper class’s children are
mostly raised by servants (“Chivalry”). Although there may be amicable and loving surrogate caretakers, these hired persons almost always take care of the external chores of the household instead of paying special attention to the master’s children’s psychological needs. Simmons further explains that the failure of a ceaseless support psychically from the parents or the caretaker is likely to be caused by the narcissistic wound of the children with “[u]nsatisfactory early relations [which] might lead to traumas that provoke feelings of terror around separation or anxieties about fusion with others” (Ryan 36). The servants’ care may lead to “‘various overt and covert attitudes of rejection’ or to ‘overindulgence,’ or a pernicious mix of the two” (qtd. in
“Chivalry”) which result from the different status between these hired people and the household employers. Simmons mentions the Puritan thinking of the 16th century that children are evil, thus leading to the aloofness or the brutality that treats the children of that period unkindly. The well-to-do may send children to boarding schools, in which lives are often unfriendly or even cruel (“Chivalry”). Not only are they
deprived of the normal concern of the parents, but they are also expected to live up to the expectations of the British Empire. They are fed with numerous texts and
publications educating and instilling into them the notion that peace and civilization are the glory of the empire which can be brought to the “backward nations of the earth” (Simmons, Narcissism 18). The children of the period are instructed both in the ideal of the imperialist self and in the image of the inferior others (18). The feelings are ambivalent: English people at that time feel downgraded at home, but when looking at the “uncivilized” nations, they feel proud and triumphant as conquerors.
While self-consciously afraid that they are not strong enough in the nation, their desire for the total control of the world turns out to be overwhelming.
Extending the aforementioned explanation of the Sherlock Holmes figure and
the 19th century childhood, the following discussions are about how Banks’s situation and anticipation diverge from them. As mentioned previously, the children in Britain are not properly treated. To Mannoni, the modern Westerner is an “orphan,” “trying clumsily to behave like a grownup” (56). Simmons states that the evolution of the Western culture is “specifically the drive to relinquish ancestral gods and traditions and family structures in the name of individualism and rationalism” (Simmons, Narcissism 20) that are “drawn to imperial power” (19). Therefore, they have to learn to be independent, clever, strong and capable adults as soon as possible. In the novel Orphans, Banks’s childhood seems to be related to the account of the children’s caretaker and their education mentioned above. Indeed, like those in the middle- and upper-class English families, Christopher Banks is raised by his parents and a servant, Mei Li, the amah. It is interesting that all of them do not provide him with sufficient psychological support, but Banks favors his mother personally and thinks of her as a
“beauty in an older, Victorian tradition” (Ishiguro 56). Banks can never forget the happy occasion in which his mother plays with him as exemplified in the race in Jessifield Park (196). Despite their inadequacy as his elders, ironically, Banks cherishes his childhood when he is able to live with them.
Unlike the children in the 19th century, Banks is not an orphan in the sense that he is ill-treated in his boyhood in Shanghai or in a boarding school in England. As James Wood puts it, “[t]here is only Christopher. Nor does the novel, in defiance of its title, really describe any moment when Christopher was an orphan: we see him as a happy child, and then as a successful adult. The time when he was an ‘orphan’ (at St.
Dunstan’s) is precisely the book’s, and presumably Christopher’s, painful lacuna” (49).
As a result, compared with the time when his parents are beside him and when he is a foreign person in a new “home” country in England, his childhood in China seems to
him much more desirable. Like the “orphaned” modern Westerner or English people, Christopher Banks is “trying clumsily to behave like a grownup” (Mannoni 56) after his childhood in China and strives for a better position as a successful detective in England. However, he is not totally at home, psychologically speaking, after being forced to leave behind his childhood in Shanghai. In the novel, the word “orphan”
refers “to that moment in our lives when we come out of the sheltered bubble of childhood and discover that the world is not the cozy place that we had previously been taught to believe” (Howard 415). Here the bubble refers to the fantasy inspired by the adults or parents, which makes the child believes that the world is a care-free and cosy place in which it is “a kind of emotional equivalent to idealism” (Shaffer, Understanding 7). Ideally, children are supposedly being thrown out from that bubble
“gradually, with guidance” (7). That is, before realizing that the world is a much harsher, darker place, a child ought to be prepared beforehand, preferably being
informed of the challenge he/she may face ahead. Nevertheless, if “you’re unfortunate, like Christopher, one day you’re just thrown out of it. And of course then you grow up with a sense of disappointment—perhaps a profound disappointment—that the world isn’t quite as nice as you once thought it was going to be” (7). In Christopher Banks’s case, he is not prepared to realize that “the world was as dark as it was” (7). Banks is suddenly taken away from the place where he spends his comfortable period as a child.
As a consequence, his problem lies in being suddenly deprived of his parents.
In respect of the ideal detective figure, Banks is not likely to match Holmes’s status, since he is an outsider himself, coming back from a foreign land. Besides, Banks is haunted by his childhood and his own subjective thinking, thereby lacking the rational shrewdness and logical thinking of Sherlock Holmes. When We Were Orphans is presented as an anti-detective narrative, reflecting Banks’s twisted self.
The novel is portrayed as “something between a pastiche of Conan Doyle and a parody of the kind of gossipy, metropolitan, highly ‘English’ prose written by
Anthony Powell” (Wood 45). The “creepers and ivy [which] are to be found clinging to the fronts of fine houses” (Ishiguro, Orphans 3) foreshadow the imminent death and devious events. According to Banks’s narration, his childhood years were “around the turn of the last century” (Wood 44) when his father participated in the great opium trading company of Morganbrook and Byatt. Even in his middle age, Banks lives in
Anthony Powell” (Wood 45). The “creepers and ivy [which] are to be found clinging to the fronts of fine houses” (Ishiguro, Orphans 3) foreshadow the imminent death and devious events. According to Banks’s narration, his childhood years were “around the turn of the last century” (Wood 44) when his father participated in the great opium trading company of Morganbrook and Byatt. Even in his middle age, Banks lives in