Assessing the hegemony in The Remains Of The Day: A Marxist Reading

ABSTRACT

This paper makes an attempt to analyze the hegemony maintained by customs, beliefs and traditions with the process of value construction done by characters of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the day. The main purpose of using the Marxist approach in analyses of this novel is to extract the hegemonic substance from the artwork. This paper aims to demonstrate the actual hegemony prevailing at our own lives. One more significant point argued in this paper is that human beings are often dependent on society and that society has its own hegemony which ends up shaping the values of that dependent individual according to their values. Traces of hegemony are found at the end through trajectory of Ishiguro’s characters. Individual choices of Stevens in the novel cannot be underestimated and it is hegemony which becomes the reason of his existence.

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