Buried Giants

The last book I taught in 2023 was The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. It is my favourite of his novels. My teaching context is gods, monsters and heroes, all of which are contained here in some form, and all of which are subverted. Nothing is as it seems or as we imagine it should be. The novel is set in the ‘dark ages’ a generation or so after King Arthur’s Britons have defeated the Saxons, but nobody really remembers that because a strange mist has settled across the land obscuring memory. The central protagonists, an elderly couple called Axl and Beatrice, set off on a journey to find their son, who they believe lives in a nearby village, although they can’t remember… The landscapes through which they travel are distant yet familiar. The recently departed Romans have left the only roads and occasional decaying villas.

Ishiguro adapts the tropes of medieval romance. The two set off on a quest, a perilous journey with many adventures along the way. Axl’s adoration of Beatrice is reminiscent of courtly love. They encounter monsters, ogres, pixies, a terrifying beast, and have a brush with religion that is even more alarming when they stay at a very sinister monastery. They meet a mysterious boatman and a lot of anguished women. They also meet other heroes: Wistan, a Saxon with his own quest, Edwin, a strange, possessed boy and Sir Gawain, as old as they are, a fragile but courageous remnant of a forgotten regime. Gawain’s equally elderly horse, Horace, is a particular pleasure.

Menacing though much of this is, the real danger is posed by the buried giant, memory, or what is concealed within it. The memory mist is produced by a dragon, a key antagonist in some romances as in many contemporary fantasies. But Querig, like the other characters, is not what we might expect. And if someone should defeat her, if the mist is lifted, what then?

The allegorical buried giant of the title can represent many things, but primarily it is the repressed memories of most of the inhabitants of this society. Because nobody remembers the bloody wars between the Britons and the Saxons, there is no real desire for vengeance. Because Axl and Beatrice can remember nothing of their past, in their present they are devoted and happy despite the shadows that the reader perceives. A central question of the novel then: Is it better to forget if remembering may bring pain, cruelty, violence and destruction?

This is where the novel has a much wider contemporary resonance. As 2023 stumbles to a close it’s difficult not to be aware of all the unburied giants that challenge the contemporary world and just forgetting won’t solve the problems. Ishiguro uses the structures and trappings of a very old literary form to explore issues that remain at the heart of human society, memory, mortality, war and love. It’s a good read.

Happy New Year!