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This paper aims to analyze the narratives and narrators of An Artist of the Floating World and The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, comparing their narrating strategies on the basis of the concept of the unreliable narrator’s self-narrative from the perspective of Gestalt psychology theories. Researchers in Gestalt psychology strive to understand our mentality as a whole and an organic system rather than a segmented one. The main issue explored in both this paper and Gestalt psychology is the autonomy and independence of individual in being true to oneself. However, the narrators in the two novels equally fail to construct their own Gestalt due to the dominance of an imperialistic ideology symbolized or substituted as paternal authority within the narrative. Both Ono and Stevens, the narrators of each novel, integrate their work ethics, social relations, and world-views with those of their “top-dogs.” They relinquish their agency in their career paths and even in romance, as seen in Stevens’ case, in the name of national duties. This paper will illuminate the process of the narrators’ blind submission to their paternal figures, which involve both biological and class-based fathers, ultimately representing an ideology disguised as dignity.
