The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro | Spoiler Free Review
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- Опубликовано: 6 сен 2024
- An Arthurian tale, of sorts.
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This has been on my physical TBR for at least a year. This sounds intriguing - thanks for the video!
I hope you enjoy it!
@@LiamsLyceum I do enjoy Arthurian retellings and books inspired by the Arthur legend, so this is right up my alley I think.
Yes! Your comment about forgiveness is exactly what I was missing from this story.
-T
This is why I like you
I found the theme of both personal and collective memory loss heartbreaking: I am way too young, but the fear of forgetting your loved ones, made the repeating dialogue between the Old Couple, which originally I felt was almost «Waiting for Godot», as a defiance that very much endeared me to them.
There are several literary references in «The Buried Giant»:
Beatrice, the Old Woman: The name of Dante’s Deceased Girlfriend and Guide through Heaven in «The Divine Comedy»
Wistan, the Saxon Warrior, slayer of Ogres and out to kill a dragon, with the aid of a boy: «Beowulf»
The Thin Old Knight on an Never-Ending Quest: «Don Quixote» as well as King Pellinore & the Questing Beast of Arthurian Myth
The Ferryman: Charon of Greek Myth
The Island: Avalon
Unsurprisingly perhaps, there are also elements that could fit both the Island Nations of Great Britain and Japan:
>The Forgotten & Remembered Atrocities of both the British and the Japanese Empires
>King Arthur as a unifying Christian Royal Medieval Myth of Chivalry and Courtly Love for «Britons» (Welsh, Cornish, Scots & Picts), «English» (Angles, Saxons & Jutes), the descendants of Viking Danes in Northeastern England & French Normans Nobles, while also responsible for the May Day Babies and Saxon massacres in many adaptations, parallells the Japanese Emperors as a force of National Unity, but also a symbol for Xenophobia and Imperialism
>Akira Kurosawa’s Ronins and the Questing Knights of Camelot, as well as Kurosawa’s «Shakespearian» movies «Throne of Blood» (The Scottish Play) & «Ran» (An Apocalyptic take on «King Lear»)
As both a novelist and a screenwriter, Ishiguro has in interviews compared the novel to the film «Pan’s Labyrinth» by Guillermo del Toro «in its use of fantastical tropes as a means of distraction from realities too painful to face». He has also stated that he had originally considered Former Jugoslavia, or post-WW2 Japan and France as potential settings, and that in an ideal casting for a movie adaptation, Gary Cooper and Bette Davis would have played the old couple and James Stewart the old knight.
I really liked the Beatrice and Wistan character references! I kept on trying to think what Axl meant besides “shoulder”, which could work for burdens anyway.
@@LiamsLyceum Have you read «Tigana» by Guy Gavriel Kay? It also uses «Magical Collective Memory Loss» to talk about themes of Cultural Extinction (somewhat eerily being published in 1991 just before the Balkan Wars and Rwanda) and the moral ambiguity of «La Resistance».
I think Ishiguro doesn't do morals, he does observations. And then he's kind of vague about what he's observing, more so in his other books than this one. So when he's showing that people forgetting, but not forgiving, then that's the observation that he is trying to convey. I mean, bleak, but...
Seems an odd choice to me, but he can do whatever, obviously. I think it’d be more effective with another dimension and still could not come off as moralistic.