Remains Of The Day Ideology

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, Stevens scrutinizes that the generation in which one labored determines the answer to the crucial question of what makes a “great” butler. Steven’s values and attitudes indicate that he is a victim to both the prescriptive and descriptive aspects of ideology that Nealon and Giroux describe in their chapter, Ideology. Ideology can have two definitions according to Nealon and Giroux which lend themselves to “allow us to say that our values are ‘better,’ without any reflection on who “we” might be, and without the slightest shred of evidence to back up the claim about ‘our’ superiority” (90). This definition is evident in the way in which Steven’s compares his values to past generations, such as that

Nealon and Giroux have two notions in which they believe this develops. Initially, they state, “ideology names a kind of slippery consensus of ‘common sense’ that a culture, people, or group shares amoung its members” (87) which is illustrated in Steven’s depiction of sitting by the fire in the servants’ hall discussing ‘greatness’. The second belief is “You can’t question common sense or the rightness of something like ‘reason’ or ‘knowledge’; it just is” (88) which goes back to why Steven’s continuously states, “…I have never until today thought of the matter in these terms…” (116). Steven’s had never given the argument any thought because the context in which he was surrounded always believed the same ideals as him, he is only forced to recognize his own definition when he leaves the context in which his definition is formed and

Steven values, and believes his generation values, serving “gentlemen who were, so to speak, furthering the progress of humanity” (114). Steven assumes that everyone in his generation would agree but then also states, “Of course, I am now speaking in broad generalizations…” (116). Nealon and Giroux would say that these broad generalizations are an effect of the perscriptive nature of Ideology. They express, “the more misty the explanation, one might say, the more ideological it is; the more an explanation appeals to an unexamined ‘common sense’ that cant be interrogated, the more it is dependent on ‘ideology’ (91). Steven’s opinion is only ‘common sense’ as long as he remains in the house in which he developed his belief, but at he quickly learns, outside the house walls and similarly structured settings; his values differ greatly to those around him. Social context is the largest influence on Steven’s views and Nealon and Giroux would say it is inevidetable because all ideologies form around our cultural understanding; our values do not necessarily exsist without our