Ignorance Is Strength: Kazuo Ishiguro’s and Graham Swift’s Argument against Knowledge

Authors

  • Bożena Kucała Jagiellonian University

Keywords:

Kazuo Ishiguro, Graham Swift, Never Let Me Go, Shuttlecock, quest for knowledge, contemporary English novel

Abstract

This article discusses the opposition of knowledge and ignorance in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Graham Swift’s Shuttlecock. While the protagonists of both novels seek knowledge, the value of knowledge is ultimately challenged. The article argues that, despite their tendency to show the pitfalls of insufficient knowledge in their stories, in these two novels Ishiguro and Shift make a case for the ethical benefits of ignorance.

References

Groes, Sebastian. “‘Something of a Lost Corner’: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Landscapes of Memory and East Anglia in Never Let Me Go.” In Kazuo Ishiguro. New Critical Visions of the Novels. Edited by Sebastian Groes and Barry Lewis. 211-224. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Ishiguro, Kazuo. “An Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro,” Book Browse, n. d. Accessed June 20, 2015. https://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm/author_number/477/kazuo-ishiguro

Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. London: Faber and Faber, 2005.

Higdon, David Leon. “‘Unconfessed Confessions’: The Narrators of Graham Swift and Julian Barnes.” In The British and Irish Novel since 1960, edited by James Acheson. 174-91. Basingstoke: Macmillian, 1991.

Janik, Del Ivan. “History and the ‘Here and Now’: The Novels of Graham Swift,” Twentieth Century Literature 35.1 (1989): 74-88.

Lea, David. Graham Swift. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005.

Lochner, Liani. “‘This is what we’re supposed to be doing, isn’t it?’: Scientific Discourse in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.” In Kazuo Ishiguro. New Critical Visions of the Novels, edited by Sebastian Groes and Barry Lewis. 225-35. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Malcolm, David. Understanding Graham Swift. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003.

Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Penguin Books in association with Martin Secker &Warburg, 1989 [1949].

Sim, Wai-chew. Kazuo Ishiguro. London and New York: Routledge, 2010.

Swift, Graham. Shuttlecock. London: Penguin Books, 1982 [1981].

Wong, Cynthia F. Kazuo Ishiguro. Plymouth: Northcote House, 2000.

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Published

2015-12-11

How to Cite

Kucała, B. (2015). Ignorance Is Strength: Kazuo Ishiguro’s and Graham Swift’s Argument against Knowledge. American & British Studies Annual, 8, 74–83. Retrieved from https://absa.upce.cz/index.php/absa/article/view/2279

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Section

Articles