Kazuo Ishiguro's 2000 novel When We Were Orphans, the first person narrator, Christopher Banks, has established himself in London as a prominent detective in the Holmesian mold who solves the crimes that no one else, sets out in 1937 to rediscover his own past by solving the mystery of the disappearance of his parents from the international colony of Shanghai, around thirty years earlier, and thus reconstruct his own history , save his parents and perhaps save the world from an imminent threat. disaster. It is an attempt to reorder the past according to the story it must tell, and it takes place against a backdrop of political and social unrest in the Shanghai of 1937. I will take a close look at its bold attempt but unsuccessful in repairing the wounds of her past. We begin to see, as Christopher's story unfolds, how his personal, intensely interior narrative of trying to reclaim his lost childhood fits into a larger narrative of searching for national, racial, and cultural. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Naturally, the orphanage is a central motif in this Ishiguro novel. The title of the novel provides our first clue to the final word of the statement. Through the use of his title, the author emphasizes the context and thematic structure of his story. “When We Were Orphans” refers to the retrospective narrative of the novel, referring to an earlier time “when” the central characters were orphans. On a deeper level, Ishiguro implies that this is an examination of a time in the mid-20th century when "we", humanity, were lost and displaced as if we were the metaphorical orphans mentioned in the title. The orphan archetype is exemplified by a surprisingly large number of mythical and legendary characters suggesting a familiar connection between being an orphan and a hero. The archetype of the orphan is inextricably linked to the hero. Western literature is full of examples of the almost archetypal myth of the orphan figure. From Huckleberry Finn to Tom Jones to Harry Potter, the orphan as hero is familiar to readers of Western literature. Ishiguro uses this archetype as the central motif of his novel. Orphan characters are icons of autonomy; Portrayed as resourceful, resilient and full of potential. For Anna Craycroft, they are also “numbers, screens onto which we [readers] project our persistent fantasies of autonomy and control. » (Orphan Theory) The orphan is often depicted as the central protagonist whose orphan status provides the opportunity to journey towards self-discovery and an independent identity despite the absence and stability of his biological parents . The orphan archetype is, in essence, the most human story of self-knowledge and independence in the face of a hostile universe. The orphanage is the realization of an individual and independent self through the coexistence of adulthood and childhood; Craycroft calls this “regressive individuation.” She goes on to explain that “To be an orphan is to simultaneously embody the freedoms of childhood and the sophistications of adulthood. » Ishiguro seems to be consumed by the potential of the orphan motif. Previous novel The Unconsoled as well as When We Were Orphans, Ishiguro explores the idea of ​​exile as an orphan, incorporating the broader themes of alienation and disconnection from the contemporary world. The protagonists of each novel are orphans searching for their lost parents, one literally and the other metaphorically. The protagonists.