When We Were Orphans

Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2000 novel When We Were Orphans, the first-person narrator, Christopher Banks, having established himself in London as a prominent detective in the Holmesian mold who solves crimes no one else can, sets out in 1937 to recover his own past by solving the mystery of his parents’ disappearance from the International Settlement in Shanghai some thirty years previous, and thus reconstruct his own history, save his parents, and perhaps save the world from impending catastrophe. It is an attempt to rearrange the past to suit the story he needs to tell, and it takes place against a background of political and social turmoil in 1937 Shanghai. I will look closely at his bold but unsuccessful attempt to repair the wounds of his past. We begin to see, as Christopher’s story unfolds, how his personal, intensely inward narrative of his attempt to recuperate his lost childhood is embedded in a larger narrative of a search for national, racial, and cultural identity.

Naturally, orphanhood is a central motif in this Ishiguro novel. The novel’s title provides our first clue with the final word in the statement. Through the use of his title, the author points to the context and the thematic structure of his narrative. “When We Were Orphans” refers to the retrospective narrative of the novel, referring to a previous time “when” the central characters were orphans. At a deeper level, Ishiguro is implying that this is an examination of a time in mid-20th-century history when ‘we,’ humanity, were lost and displaced as if we were the metaphorical orphans referred to in the title. The Orphan Archetype is illustrated in a surprisingly large number of mythical and legendary figures suggesting a familiar connection between being an orphan and a hero. The orphan archetype is inextricably connected with the hero. Western literature is filled with examples of the almost archetypal myth of the orphan figure. From Huckleberry Finn to Tom Jones to Harry Potter, the orphan as a hero is familiar to readers of Western literature. Ishiguro utilizes this archetype as the central motif in his novel. Orphan characters are icons of autonomy; Depicted as resourceful, resilient, and rife with potential. For Anna Craycroft, they are also “ciphers, screens on to which we [readers] project our enduring fantasies of autonomy and control. ” (Orphan Theory)

The orphan is often portrayed as the central protagonist whose orphanhood presents the opportunity to journey towards self-discovery, and independent identity despite the absence and stability of their biological parents. The orphan archetype is, in essence, the most human story of self-knowledge and independence in the face of a hostile universe. Orphanhood is the realization of an individual and independent self through the coexistence of adulthood and childhood; Craycroft refers to this as “regressive individuation. ” She goes on to explain that “To be Orphan is to simultaneously embody the freedoms of childhood and the sophistications of adulthood. ” Ishiguro seems to be consumed by the potential of the orphan motif. In his previous novel The Unconsoled as well as When We Were Orphans, Ishiguro explores the idea of exile as an orphan, incorporating the larger themes of alienation and disconnection from the contemporary world.

The protagonists in each novel are orphans searching for their lost parents, one literally and the other metaphorically. Ishiguro’s protagonists are often situationally exiled or out of sync with the wolds they find themselves in. This sensation of being out of place can justify the protagonist’s concern with events from the past which is displayed in the use of flashback techniques in Ishiguro’s work. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Ishiguro described When We Were Orphans as “A story of wanting to fix things that have been broken in childhood. ” This is a common theme for Ishiguro’s protagonists, Likely because Ishiguro is an expat himself and suffers from the same cultural isolation. Ishiguro’s own displacement from his native Japan and his adoption by England and British culture as his surrogate parent culture might be a reflection of this thematic strand that runs through much of his literature. Ishiguro, Of Japanese heritage, left Japan for England with his parents at the age of five. Although he spoke Japanese at home as a child, he claims to be unable to read Japanese characters. His early novels, A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World, are concerned directly with “Japanese” or Asian themes. With When We Were Orphans, Ishiguro returns to an Asian setting to offer us the personal experience of Christopher Banks who struggles with his lack of national identity. In When We Were Orphans, detective Christopher Banks discovers that the problem of recovering his memories of the past involves a confrontation with childhood trauma – the disappearance of his parents – an incident that has structured his adult life and identity. Echoing Craycroft’s “regressive individualization”, Ishiguro explains “that moment of 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. Even when we become adults, something of that disappointment still remains…” (Pg. 336).

In When We Were Orphans, Banks’ Orphanhood represents a naive and innocent part of us that wants to go back and fix things. It’s arguable that Banks becomes a detective because of the loss of his parents. He is unable to overcome his loss and his stuck in a state of paralysis, unable to proceed with his life in a healthy manner. Like the Minotaur, he is trapped in a labyrinth. His orphanhood directly affects his identity. In many ways, his orphanhood is his identity.