Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and

Nietzsche’s “Problem of the Actor”

Paul Patton

Title: Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Nietzsche’s “Problem of the Actor”
Abstract: The Remains of the Day is open to many different interpretations: a postmodern novel
about the unreliability of first person narration; a tragedy of emotional repression; a denunciation
of the English class system, and so on. I offer a different reading of the novel as an exploration of
modern selfhood, reading it against the background of Nietzsche’s discussions of actors and acting.
The central character, Mr Stevens, holds strong views about what it means to be not merely a good
but a great butler. His life is lived in the service of this ideal, for which he pays a high emotional
and moral price. I read the novel as addressing directly the question of the relationship between
personhood and the roles that we assume, thereby raising profound questions about that nature of
individual identity, agency and responsibility in the modern world.
Key words: Kazuo Ishiguro; Nietzsche; “problem of the actor;” dignity
Author: Paul Patton is Scientia Professor of Philosophy, University of New South Wales,
Australia. He is also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He is the author of
Deleuze and the Political (Routledge, 2000) and Deleuzian Concepts: Philosophy, Colonization,
Politics (Stanford, 2010). He is editor of Nietzsche, Feminism and Political Theory (Routledge
1993) and author of a number of articles and book chapters on Nietzsche. In June 2019 he will
take up the position of Hongyi Chair Professor of Philosophy at Wuhan University.
DOI:10.16651/j.cnki.fllr.2018.0059
标题：石黑一雄的《长日留痕》和尼采的“演员问题”
内容摘要：《长日留痕》是一部有着多种阐释可能的小说。现有阐释有的视其为书写第一
人称叙述不可靠性的后现代小说，有的认为它是一出情感抑制的悲剧，有的论证它对英国
阶级体系的抨击，凡此种种，不一而足。与已有阐释不同的是，我以尼采对演员和扮演的
讨论为小说解读的背景参照，认为《长日留痕》探索了现代自我观。主人公史蒂文斯对何
为伟大男仆有着坚定不渝的信念。他用自己的一生践行这一理想，并为此付出高昂的情感
和道德代价。小说探讨了人的观念与我们所扮演的角色之间的关系问题，并藉此提出了现
代世界中事关个体身份的本质、个体能动性和责任等具有重大意义的问题。
关键词：石黑一雄；尼采；“演员问题”；尊严
作者简介：保罗·帕顿是澳大利亚新南威尔士大学哲学杰出教授 , 澳大利亚人文科学院院士。
主要论著包括《德勒兹与政治》和《德勒兹概念：哲学、殖民、政治》，编著有《尼采、
女性主义和政治理论》，发表尼采研究的论文和专章若干篇。2019 年 6 月起受聘出任武汉
大学哲学学院弘毅讲席教授。
 Paul Patton：Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Nietzsche’s “Problem of the Actor” 9

The profession of butler as it is presented in film and literature seems an anachronistic

occupation, but perhaps this has more to do with the peculiar sensibilities and constraints of
the aristocratic households in which they are employed than with the nature of their work.
With the increase in the number of super wealthy households since the 1980s, the number
of professional butlers or household managers worldwide is apparently rising. The nature of
the job requires a devotion to serving the needs and sensibilities of employers that overlaps
in some ways with the profession of acting and this overlap will be a focus of my reading of
Kazuo Ishiguro’s award winning novel The Remains of the Day (Ishiguro 1989). As Nietzsche
noted in The Gay Science 361, the virtues characteristic of the actor are shared with those of a
range of other categories of people whose lives unfold in situations of relative powerlessness,
or where the sensibilities of others must take precedence. These include members of lower
social classes, of professions such as diplomacy, or of excluded or dominated casts such as
Jewish people or women: ‘consider the whole history of women – mustn’t they be actresses
first and foremost? (The Gay Science 226). These virtues, or what Nietzsche calls the “instinct,”
of actors include such things as：

Falseness with a good conscience; the delight in pretence erupting as

a power that pushes aside, floods, and at times extinguishes one’s so-called
‘character’; the inner longing for a role and mask, for an appearance (Schein);
an excess of capacities for all kinds of adaptation that can no longer be satisfied
in the service of the nearest, most narrowly conceived utility (225-6).

In the light of this diagnosis, it is entirely appropriate that the butler in Downton
Abbey, Mr Carson, should have had a previous career on the stage. Similarly, the butler and
principal character in The Remains of the Day, Mr Stevens, is conscious of his profession as
one that requires him to play a role. Indeed, for Stevens, it is a mark of his quality as a butler
that he is at all times fully and completely invested in the role:

A butler of any quality must be seen to inhabit his role, utterly and fully;
he cannot be seen casting it aside one moment simply to don it again the next as
though it were nothing more than a pantomime costume. There is one situation
and one situation only in which a butler who cares about his dignity may feel
free to unburden himself of his role; that is to say, when he is entirely alone
(Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day 169).

Stevens’ demanding conception of what it is to be a great butler lies at the heart of the
novel. It provides the basis for the unfolding story of unrequited and unacknowledged love
between him and Miss Kenton who was for a long time the housekeeper at Darlington Hall
where he worked. It also explains why Stevens could devote his life to the service of a man
10 外国语文研究 2018 年第 5 期 Foreign Language and Literature Research 5（2018)

who devoted much time and effort to appeasement if not collaboration with the Nazi regime
that took hold of Germany in the 1930s. Both elements of Stevens’ life give him cause for
regret, although it would be too simple to say that he or the reader come to see his life as a
tragic waste. Nietzsche’s reflections on the actor as a human type help us to see why. The
Gay Science 361, “On the problem of the actor,” begins with his blunt declaration that “The
problem of the actor has troubled me for a very long time” (The Gay Science 225). Nietzsche
does not explain in this section precisely what is his problem with the actor type, although he
does provide a clue at the outset when he wonders whether it is not only from the angle of this
problem “that one can approach the dangerous concept of the ‘artist’ ” (225).
To fully appreciate Nietzsche’s actor problem, we need to turn to another section of
The Gay Science, paragraph 356 entitled “The extent to which things will become ever more
‘artistic’ in Europe.” Here he contrasts different periods of European history in terms of the
manner in which individuals experience their relation to their chosen occupation: first, there
are those earlier times in which “men believed with unyielding confidence, even with piety, in
their predestination for just this business, just this way of making a living, and utterly refused
to acknowledge the element of accident, role and caprice” (215).
In these periods, individuals’ belief in their predestination for a particular role endowed
them with a particular “faith’ which in turn sustained the “estates, guilds and inherited trade
privileges’ that supported the kind of social pyramid found in the middle ages. Then there
are those contrary ages of a more democratic temper, in which people unlearn that faith and
“the individual is convinced he can do just about anything and is up to playing any role; and
everyone experiments with himself, improvises, experiments again, enjoys experimenting,
where all nature ceases and becomes art ”(216).
In these periods, a different kind of “role faith” characterizes people’s relation to their
occupations: “the faith of artists, if you will” (216). This faith first emerged in Periclean
Athens during the fifth century BC and the result was a world in which the Greeks “really
became actors” (216). Nietzsche believed that modern Europeans were well advanced along
the same road and that, once people discover the extent to which they can be and are actors,
they become actors. Hence the suggestion in the title of this section that things will continue
to become ever more “artistic” in Europe. For reasons that will be explained below, Nietzsche
found this a worrying development in modern European culture.
Ishiguro’s Mr Stevens displays elements of both of the above ways of relating to his
chosen occupation. He is a butler employed in the service of one of the grand houses of the
English landed gentry during the first half of the twentieth century. On the one hand, his father
had been a butler and Stevens began his professional life as a footman under his father’s
supervision. There is no suggestion that he ever contemplated any other way of earning his
living and his dedication to the profession is expressed in his recurrent reflections on whether
or not he might be counted among the truly great butlers of his time. On the other hand, he
 Paul Patton：Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Nietzsche’s “Problem of the Actor” 11

resists the suggestion that it is merely a role that a butler can adopt or discard at will. He
devotes his life to becoming one of those great butlers who fully and completely inhabit the
role.

The Love Story

The Remains of the Day takes the form of a first-person narrative, in which Mr Stevens
relates his journey to visit Miss Kenton, twenty years after she had married and left Darlington
Hall to live with her husband and later her daughter in Cornwall on the other side of the
country. By the time of this journey across England in 1956, Stevens’ previous employer Lord
Darlington has died and the house has been sold to a wealthy American. The new owner,
Mr Farraday, asks Stevens to manage the household with a much-reduced number of staff.
Initially he presents this as the reason for this journey to see Miss Kenton, justifying the
visit as a professional matter, with the potential to solve a staffing problem. However, there
are strong indications of a more personal motivation. Stevens is convinced that a letter from
the former Miss Kenton hints at a desire to return to her former position as housekeeper. As
the journey unfolds he begins to admit that she does not explicitly state her wish to return to
her former position, even though he remains convinced that this is the unmistakable subtext.
Not until they finally meet does he finally admit that he was mistaken in his reading of Miss
Kenton’s state of mind. The prospect of her returning to Darlington Hall is never raised and
she makes it clear that she is not as unhappy with her married life as Stevens had thought.
This is but one of many instances in the novel in which we are made aware of the unreliability
of the narrator’s view of events.
To the reader, there are clear indications throughout the novel of an emotional attraction
between them, but for most part this goes unrecognised by Stevens. He recounts an episode
shortly after Miss Kenton had arrived at Darlington Hall in which she brings flowers to his
room in a gesture of friendship and good will. He rebuffs her offer and launches into a series
of critical remarks about her performance as housemaid. It becomes apparent that she repeated
the offer of flowers several times during her years at Darlington Hall. They developed a habit
of nightly meetings over a cup of cocoa, at the end of the working day, which Stevens also
justifies as a means to improve their performance of their respective duties. His accounts
of these interactions and his responses to them remain resolutely framed in professional
rather than personal terms. On another occasion, she enters his room while he is off duty and
endeavours to flirt with him over a book he was reading. In his own words, Stevens shows her
out of his pantry “quite firmly” and brings the unfortunate episode to a close (Ishiguro, The
Remains of the Day 167). It was this episode that led to the reflections on the relationship of a
butler of quality to his role cited at the outset above. Stevens sincerely believed that any butler
who took his vocation seriously should never allow himself to be “off duty” in the presence
12 外国语文研究 2018 年第 5 期 Foreign Language and Literature Research 5（2018)

of others. His commitment to this ideal effectively foreclosed the possibility of any personal,
non-professional interaction with Miss Kenton.
Even as he narrates these incidents and his own refusal to relate to her, or indeed to
himself, in terms other than his conception of what is required of a butler in charge of the
staff at a large noble house, Stevens remains entirely within the character of his professional
persona. He recounts one especially poignant episode in which she returns from an evening
with her future husband and informs him that she has accepted a proposal of marriage. Stevens
congratulates her and insists that he must return to his duties waiting on Lord Darlington and
some very important guests upstairs. It is only years later when they finally meet again that his
account betrays his real feelings for her. He asks whether she is happy in her married life. She
insists that she did come to love her husband, but also admits to moments when she thought
about another and better life that she might have had: “For instance, I get to thinking about a
life I may have had with you, Mr Stevens” (Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day 239).
Stevens does not respond immediately and confesses that her words provoked an intense
sorrow on his part, saying to the reader “Indeed – why should I not admit it? – at that moment
my heart was breaking”(Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day 239).
To Miss Kenton, or Mrs Benn as she now is, he says only that she should not dwell
on what might have been but rather be grateful for what she has. She should look forward
to her remaining happy years with her husband, who is about to retire, and to the expected
grandchildren from her daughter. The title of the novel comes from a remark a few pages
further on when Stevens reflects on his advice to the woman it is now clear to him that he
loved and says that perhaps he too “should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the
best of what remains of my day” (Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day 244).
This comment refers back to a conversation that he had with a stranger that he met
while sitting on the pier at Weymouth shortly after his meeting with the former Miss Kenton.
It was near sunset and he waited along with many others for the evening spectacle of the
coloured lights on the pier to be switched on. In the course of their conversation the stranger,
who turned out to be a retired butler from a much smaller household, tells Stevens that he too
should think about retirement: “You’ve got to enjoy yourself. The evening’s the best part of
the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it. That’s how
I look at it. Ask anybody, they’ll all tell you. The evening’s the best part of the day” (Ishiguro,
The Remains of the Day 244).
The metaphor implicit in this comment is not just any old metaphor. It is one of the
examples given in Aristotle’s Poetics immediately after he defines metaphor as giving to
something a name that belongs to something else. “As old age is to life, so is evening to day.
One will accordingly describe evening as the ‘old age of the day’ – or by the Empedoclean
equivalent; and old age as the ‘evening’ or ‘sunset of life’ ”(Aristotle, Poetics 2333 [1457b]).
So the remains of the day refers to the twilight years which Stevens looks back at the
 Paul Patton：Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Nietzsche’s “Problem of the Actor” 13

life he has lived and tries to make sense of what he has done. Perhaps the implicit reference
to this exemplary, canonical metaphor in the title suggests that the novel itself is intended as
a metaphor. But a metaphor for what exactly? The novel consists of Stevens’s narration of
his journey across England and eventual reunion with Miss Kenton, along with his memories
and account of the life he has lived. How and for whom is this account of a man attempting
to perform his chosen role to the best of his abilities a metaphor? To answer this question, we
need to look more closely at the character, Stevens, and the life that he has lived in pursuit of
his conception of the good.

Mr Stevens, Lord Darlington and the Dignity of a Great Butler

Stevens has lived his entire life, not only in the profession and social role of a butler, but
in pursuit of an ideal, namely to be the best butler he can be. Early in the novel he recounts
how discussions with other members of his profession often returned to the question of the
qualities that make someone not merely a good but a “great” butler. Stevens’ answer to this
question is not surprisingly bound up with the qualities of the English character and landscape
and also relies on the concept of dignity:

If one looks at these persons we agree are ‘great’ butlers, if one looks
at, say, Mr Marshall or Mr Lane, it does seem to me that the factor which
distinguishes them from those butlers who are merely extremely competent is
most closely captured by this word “dignity” (Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
33).

He elaborates on the meaning of this word “dignity” by telling three stories. One, much
loved by his father, recounts the actions of a butler in India who quietly and efficiently shot
and removed a tiger that had lodged itself under the dining table while his employer was
taking tea with guests. Afterwards the butler reassures his employer by saying “Dinner will be
served at the usual time and I am pleased to say there will be no discernible traces left of the
recent occurrence by that time” (Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day 36).
The other stories involve his father behaving with similar professionalism in difficult
circumstances. Stevens clearly regards his father as one who manifested the qualities of a
great butler: calm and efficient fulfilment of the tasks at hand, but above all the ability to
maintain his professional bearing even under the most difficult personal circumstances.

Lesser butlers will abandon their professional being for the private one
at the least provocation. For such persons, being a butler is like playing some
pantomime role; a small push, a slight stumble, and the facade will drop off to
reveal the actor underneath. The great butlers are great by virtue of their ability
14 外国语文研究 2018 年第 5 期 Foreign Language and Literature Research 5（2018)

to inhabit their professional role and inhabit it to the utmost; they will not be
shaken out by external events, however surprising, alarming or vexing. They
wear their professionalism as a decent gentleman will wear his suit: he will not
let ruffians or circumstance tear it off him in the public gaze; he will discard it
when, and only when, he wills to do so, and this will invariably be when he is
entirely alone (Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day 42-43).

Stevens does not believe that the qualities of a great butler are innate. He rather sees
them as an ideal that anyone who chooses to become a butler should embrace and strive to
achieve. His own commitment to this ideal poses an insurmountable obstacle to any romantic
relationships with Miss Kenton. He maintains his professional bearing at all times, even
when she surprises him alone in his room reading. Stevens’ commitment to his professional
being is such that he cannot step out of character in front of anyone, for in that case he is not
entirely alone. The novel includes a number of episodes in which Stevens displays this kind of
dignity, in addition to his repeated refusal to respond to Miss Kenton’s personal advances. His
interactions with his father, who lives out the remains of his days in service as under-butler at
Darlington Hall, are carried out in the same unrelentingly professional manner. One especially
significant incident involved his continuing to serve at a large gathering of politicians,
diplomats and other distinguished guests while his father was dying upstairs. The purpose of
this gathering in 1923 was to bring together influential figures in advance of an international
conference to be held in Italy. The issue of the effects of the Treaty of Versailles on Germany
and the German people had become a focus of Lord Darlington’s unofficial diplomatic activity
in the post-war period. There are references to his military service and to his having spent time
at the Foreign Office. His well-meaning desire to see “justice in this world” has less to do with
the economic and political reconstruction of Europe than with aristocratic ideals of fair play
and the appropriate behaviour towards a defeated enemy. ①
During the gathering, Stevens’ father falls gravely ill and is taken upstairs to his room.
Stevens resists the suggestion of Miss Kenton that perhaps he should attend to his father
and only goes upstairs during momentary breaks in his service throughout the evening. The
following night, his father suffers a severe stroke and dies while Stevens continues to serve
the distinguished guests downstairs. In Stevens’ retrospective narrative, this event stands out
as a triumphant moment in his quest for greatness as a butler:

Of course, it is not for me to suggest that I am worthy of ever being placed

alongside the likes of the “great” butlers of our generation, such as Mr Marshall
or Mr Lane … Even so, if you consider the pressures contingent on me that
night, you may not think I delude myself unduly if I go so far as to suggest that I
did perhaps display, in the face of everything, at least in some degree a “dignity”
 Paul Patton：Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Nietzsche’s “Problem of the Actor” 15

worthy of someone like Mr Marshall - or come to that, my father. Indeed, why

should I deny it? For all its sad associations, whenever I recall that evening
today, I find I do so with a large sense of triumph (Ishiguro, The Remains of the
Day 110).

Another significant episode that Stevens experiences as a moment of triumph involved

Miss Kenton’s announcement of her impending marriage in the midst of an extremely
important meeting involving the British Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the German
Ambassador. Miss Kenton returns from an evening out with her suitor and informs Stevens
that she has accepted a proposal of marriage. He offers his congratulations before returning
to his duties with the meeting of dignitaries. Later, he recounts a moment when he passed her
door and was certain that she was crying, only to hurry back upstairs. Afterwards, he recalls
that while he stood at his post:

a deep feeling of triumph started to well up within me. I cannot remember

to what extent I analysed this feeling at the time, but today, looking back on it,
it does not seem so difficult to account for. I had, after all, just come through an
extremely trying evening, throughout which I had managed to preserve a “dignity
in keeping with my position” —and had done so, moreover, in a manner even
my father might have been proud of (Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day 227).

Like the tears that appeared on his cheeks as he served guests while his father lay dying
upstairs, this episode shows something of the personal cost involved in maintaining one’s
dignity in the sense that Stevens’ ideal of a truly great butler required.
The concept of dignity is further complicated by its connection to another condition that
Stevens considers to be necessary in order to qualify as a great butler, namely that he (only
men could be butlers) serve a distinguished household. By “distinguished” he did not mean
set apart by lineage, title, or wealth although some degree of each was also a pre-requisite.
Rather, he took “distinguished” to refer to the moral qualities of the head of the household:
“for our generation, I think it fair to say, professional prestige lay most significantly in the
moral worth of one’s employer”(Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day114). Stevens adds a further
clause to this condition such that a distinguished household must be one that lay close to the
hub of affairs of state. A truly great butler then could only be one in the service of someone
both active and influential among those great men and women who determined the course
of the world, and who sought to use that influence to further “the progress of humanity”: “A
‘great’ butler can only be, surely, one who can point to his years of service and say that he has
applied his talents to serving a great gentleman — and through the latter, to serving humanity”
(Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day117).
Throughout much of the novel Stevens is convinced that the Lord Darlington he served
16 外国语文研究 2018 年第 5 期 Foreign Language and Literature Research 5（2018)

met the criteria for leading a distinguished household. Sadly, however, the narrative gradually
reveals that Darlington, although an honourable English gentleman with genuine sympathy
for the plight of the German people after the first world war, became drawn into sympathy
for Hitler and German Nazism. He was even for a period associated with the organization of
English fascists led by George Mosely. At one point he gave in to pressure to uphold their
anti-Semitic views and dismissed two Jewish maids, an action of which Miss Kenton greatly
disapproved. He later became an important conduit for what would now be called “back door”
communication between the German government under Hitler and the British government.
In the eyes of many he was considered at best a willing pawn of German diplomacy, at worst
a fascist sympathiser. There is mention towards the end of the novel of a libel case pursued
against an English newspaper that his Lordship lost and that destroyed his reputation.
To the reader, it is clear that far from being a worthy contributor to the progress of
humanity, Darlington was a morally compromised amateur whose actions served the interests
of a regime that became known for its crimes against humanity. Stevens tries at one point to
justify himself for having so loyally served someone whose life and work turned out to be,
at best, ‘a sad waste.’ His defence is rather like the infamous Eichmann defence that he was
simply a public servant following orders in organising the shipment of Jews to concentration
camps. In the end a butler has to put his faith in someone, recognizing that ordinary people
such as he “will never be in a position to comprehend the great affairs of today’s world,
and our best course will always be to put our trust in an employer we judge to be wise and
honourable, and to devote our energies to the task of serving him to the best of our ability”
(Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day 201).
This subservient view of the butler’s relation to politics is contrasted at one point with
the democratic view of an ordinary worker in a small village where Stevens spends a night. A
Mr Harry Smith defends the democratic right of ordinary men and women to freely express
their opinion and to vote for their local member of parliament, arguing that this is why the
British people fought in the war against Hitler’s Germany and “what dignity’s really about”
(Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day 186). Stevens’ response to this encounter is to dismiss
Harry Smith’s views as too idealistic to be taken seriously and certainly not the way to
understand dignity.
However, by the end of the novel Stevens comes to appreciate the impact on his own life
of the errors of judgment on the part of his employer. In the course of the conversation about
the twilight of life with the stranger on Weymouth Pier it becomes apparent that he is crying,
although it is unclear whether about the conversation he just had with Miss Kenton (in which
his heart breaks) or about Lord Darlington or perhaps both. His final judgment about his
former employer is even more critical of himself:

Lord Darlington wasn’t a bad man. He wasn’t a bad man at all. And at least
 Paul Patton：Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Nietzsche’s “Problem of the Actor” 17

he had the privilege of being able to say at the end of his life that he made his
own mistakes. His lordship was a courageous man. He chose a certain path in
life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at
least. As for myself, I cannot even claim that. You see, I trusted. I trusted in his
lordship’s wisdom. All those years I served him, I trusted I was doing something
worthwhile. I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really– one has to ask
oneself – what dignity is there in that? (Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day 243).

This dimension of Stevens’ life narrative reveals a further moral cost of aspiring to be
a great butler, in addition to the personal cost that is revealed by the story of his relationship
to Miss Kenton. Here too, it would be tempting to read the novel as a tragedy, or a double
tragedy with both a personal and a moral and political dimension. However, there is another
thread running through the novel that gives us reason to resist such a reading. It is this thread
that helps us to answer the question about metaphor posed earlier. To unravel this thread, we
need to return to Nietzsche’s problem with the subject as actor.

Nietzsche’s Problem of the Actor

As noted above, Nietzsche’s problem with actors and acting has to do with Nietzsche’s
enthusiasm for and use of the concept of the artist, “a concept that has so far been treated
with unpardonable generosity” (The Gay Science, 225). His generosity towards art and artists
is evident throughout The Gay Science, which contains many passages devoted to their
praise. Paragraph 290 famously argues for the need to “give style” to one’s character, thereby
defending a form of relation to the self which treats it as a work of art (163). Paragraph 78
singles out the theatrical arts for special praise on the grounds that they, along with religion,
have given us the capacity for an internal distance from and perspective on who and what we
are. Such artists have taught us “the art of ‘putting oneself on stage’ before oneself” (79). In
these and other passages, Nietzsche clearly regards the artistic relation to the self and to the
world in a positive light, so what is the problem revealed by actors and acting?
Paragraph 356 of The Gay Science begins with the observation that, even in the “time of
transition” that he considers the Europe of his day to be, “the need to make a living still forces
nearly all European men to adopt a particular role, their so-called profession” (215). While a
few are able to freely choose this role, for most it is chosen. Nietzsche argues that, whatever
the manner in which a particular profession was adopted, over time most people forget the
accidents, moods or caprices which led to this outcome. They forget the contingency of the
fact that they now play this role rather than another one. They forget how many other roles
they might have played and confound themselves with the role: “Upon deeper consideration,
the role has actually become character; and artifice, nature” (215). He had already commented
on the phenomenon of role becoming character in Human, All Too Human, pointing to the
18 外国语文研究 2018 年第 5 期 Foreign Language and Literature Research 5（2018)

many ways in which individuals are transformed by the constant or committed performance of
a role into the very thing that they are imitating:

If someone obstinately and for a long time wants to appear something it is

in the end hard for him to be anything else. The profession of almost every man,
even that of the artist, begins with hypocrisy, with an imitation from without,
with a copying of what is most effective. He who is always wearing a mask of
a friendly countenance must finally acquire a power over benevolent moods
without which the impression of friendliness cannot be obtained - and finally
these acquire power over him, he is benevolent. (Human, All Too Human 29-
40). ②

Nietzsche’s problem with the actor type refers to what happens when this phenomenon
of role becoming character is played out in those democratic ages in which individuals
become convinced that they can play any role. Once individuals become conscious of their
occupations as roles they are susceptible to what he calls “an odd metamorphosis that is not
every respect worthy of imitation” (The Gay Science 216). In these periods, what was hitherto
a particular mode of relating to one’s roles (consciously, artistically) expands to become the
only role. What was initially a mode of relating to the variety of roles one might have adopted
becomes a role like any other: “every time man starts to discover the extent to which he is
playing a role and the extent to which he can be an actor, he becomes an actor’ (216). In short,
the artist-self that experiences itself as capable of managing almost any role collapses into a
single role and the individual becomes just an actor. According to Nietzsche, this phenomenon
first appeared among the Greeks, whom he described in Daybreak as “actors incarnate”
who “play-acted before themselves” (Daybreak 28). Modern individuals, he fears, are well
advanced along this same road.
The problem with a world in which people experience themselves as actors is the loss
of another type of artist that Nietzsche considers important for the creation of new institutions
and new values. These are the “involuntary and unconscious” artists, the type of individuals
endowed with complete faith in their predestination for a particular way of life. Nietzsche
believes that individuals of this type were the foundations upon which, in the past, durable
social orders were built. Pre-modern societies were built upon the role faith of individuals
who perceived their roles as destiny and who saw themselves as having value only insofar
as they were like “a stone in a great edifice” (The Gay Science 216). The argument of The
Gay Science is that such unconscious artists will become an endangered species once actors
become the dominant type of “human flora and fauna”. When “ ‘the actors,’ all types of actors,
are the real masters,” what dies out is “the fundamental faith on the basis of which someone
could calculate, promise, anticipate the future ...” (216).
 Paul Patton：Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Nietzsche’s “Problem of the Actor” 19

On this basis, he argues that modern social systems are not “societies” in the old sense
of the term since they lack the fundamental material out of which such societies were built.
Because modern individuals lack the role faith of earlier periods, “We are all no longer
material for a society; this a timely truth” (216). This diagnosis of the way things are headed
in modern European society anticipates much that has been written about postmodernity.
Twentieth century developments in the technology of the image have transformed the public
sphere of modern social life into an electronic stage on which B grade Hollywood movie stars
can become presidents. Ronald Reagan’s success as a politician turned precisely upon the fact
that he was an actor and that he was perceived to be acting his political roles. He represented
a social world in which subjects have become actors and politics is like advertising, less
about representing the will of the people than about producing “commitment to a scenario”
(Baudrillard, America 109). He was only the first in a series of media personalities who
achieved high political office and blurred the lines between theatrical and political personae. ③

Mere Actors and Genuine Actors

Ishiguro’s Mr Stevens exemplifies the situation of the person in whom the role has
become character, but not the situation of those who have become mere actors. As we saw
above, his ideal of the dignity required of a great butler demands that he should never be
induced to abandon the professional being he inhabits. That is why after having repelled the
attempt by Miss Kenton to engage in social interaction outside the bounds of their respective
roles, when she comes into his room while he is engaged in purely recreational reading, he
says that “A butler of any quality must be seen to inhabit his role, utterly and fully; he cannot
be seen casting it aside one moment simply to don it again the next as though it were nothing
more than a pantomime costume” (Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day 169).
He sees his professional being as a role, just as an actor would see the persona they adopt
in a given play. However, unlike a professional actor he remains so completely committed to
his role that he cannot relate to other people, or even to his own actions, except in terms of
his conception of what is required of a great butler. From an outsider’s point of view, it would
be easy to see his life as a tragic waste. Such a response to the novel would see Stevens as
leading a life in which role had become character to such a degree that he is incapable of the
everyday human pleasures of human warmth and companionship. His devotion to his calling
cuts him off from the possibility of an open and acknowledged emotional relationship with
Miss Kenton.
However, Stevens’ life can be read as a tragedy only if we assume that there is a true
self, an inner core of emotions and desires, which he was unable to express from within the
confines of his role. Given the degree to which appearance has become being in his case, it is
not clear that any such assumption is warranted. His ethic of service makes total immersion
20 外国语文研究 2018 年第 5 期 Foreign Language and Literature Research 5（2018)

in the role a criterion of greatness as a butler. From the point of view of his own conception
of himself, therefore, one cannot deny him a certain moral strength along with his dignity, as
a result of his wholehearted commitment to his occupation. His role is a mask, but one that he
never takes off, not even when his own happiness or his own grief are at stake. At the end of
the novel, after he has come to realize that another performance of the role might have led to
a very different life with Miss Kenton, and perhaps a different attitude towards his employer
Lord Darlington, he resolves to “adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of
what remains of my day” (Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day 244). This resolve does not lead
him to abandon the role of butler but rather to modify it by including the skill of banter, as a
means to generate human warmth with others, among the professional skills of a great butler.
Stevens thus exemplifies the artistic relation to his own life and to himself that Nietzsche
praises in The Gay Science 290, to the extent that that he fashions himself in the service of
an ideal. He does live his life as a role, for he allows that the butler persona is something he
might shed, although never in front of others. Yet while he is conscious of himself as acting
a part, Stevens does not for all that become a mere actor. He genuinely and utterly inhabits
his role. Indeed, in the terms of his own definition of what makes a great butler, it is precisely
the lesser butlers who are mere actors, capable of abandoning their professional being at the
slightest provocation. As noted earlier, “For such persons, being a butler is like playing a
pantomime role; a small push, a slight stumble, and the facade will drop off to reveal the actor
underneath” (Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day 42).
Ishiguro’s distinction between those for whom being a butler is like playing a
pantomime and those like Mr Stevens who genuinely and fully inhabit the role recalls a
distinction that Nietzsche draws in Thus Spoke Zarathustra between mere actors and genuine
actors. An overriding concern of that book, and of Nietzsche’s philosophy as a whole, is the
creation of new values. From Human, All Too Human and Daybreak onwards Nietzsche was
concerned to revalue the fundamental moral values of Christian European society. Contrary
to the popular misunderstanding of Nietzschean Übermensch as singular individuals who
create their own values, for Nietzsche new values are always embodied in new institutions
and forms of social life. It follows that one of the conditions for the emergence of new types
of human being is the extreme embodiment of existing institutions and practices. Those who
push a given form of life to its limits also contribute to the emergence of the new, even if in a
different manner to those who consciously abandon the old ways. Accordingly, in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, Nietzsche includes among the virtues that are required to bring about the creation
of new values such things as courage and commitment to a single virtue, even to the point that
one lives or dies for one’s virtue. The incident involving the tightrope walker in the Prologue
exemplifies this virtue. A tightrope walker momentarily usurps the attention of the crowd in
place of Zarathustra, before his demon appears on the rope and causes him to fall. Zarathustra
kneels beside the dying man and comforts him with the thought that he has made a vocation
 Paul Patton：Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Nietzsche’s “Problem of the Actor” 21

out of confronting danger and now dies in the pursuit of his calling, saying “there is nothing
contemptible about that” (Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 12). Zarathustra reassures the
dying tightrope walker that his life has not been pointless and it is possible to say the same
about Stevens. In contrast to the view of his life as a tragic waste, Zarathustra’s perspective
enables us to see it as a life lived in pursuit of his calling and not without a certain dignity.
Individuals who commit to a particular virtue or way of life are those with the capacity
to truly want a particular course of action. Zarathustra insists on the importance of this in Part
Three “On the Virtue that Makes Small,” where he launches into a diatribe against small men
and those who become smaller “because of their teaching on happiness and virtue”:

A few of them will, but most of them are merely willed. A few of them are
genuine, but most of them are bad actors. There are unknowing actors among
them and unwilling actors among them – the genuine are always rare, especially
the genuine actors. (135)

The distinctions invoked in this passage, between bad actors, but also unconscious and
involuntary actors, and genuine actors refer us back to Nietzsche’s problem with actors and
acting. As the remarks cited earlier in praise of art and artists suggest, it is not acting per se
that is the problem but certain kinds of acting. He is critical of what he calls “mere acting” and
this passage in Thus Spoke Zarathustra makes it clear that what is at issue is the capacity of
the individual to fully identify with a particular role. Those who can do this are, in Nietzsche’s
terms, those who can will: “Oh if only you would put aside all half willing and become as res-
olute in your sloth as in your deeds! Oh if only you understood my words: ‘Go ahead and do
whatever you will – but first be the kind of people who can will!’ ”(137)
In these terms, Stevens is a genuine actor rather than a mere actor conscious of himself
as only playing a role. To postmodern readers, and indeed to the new American owner of
Darlington Hall, he is an anachronism. He is the kind of person that many would say “should
get out more often,” which is precisely the advice given to him by his new employer when
he encourages him to take a break from work and see more of the country. Stevens’ problem
is not that he is no longer material for a society but rather that he is material for a kind of
society whose time has passed. As we saw earlier, the problem lies with his chosen role rather
than with Stevens’ attitude towards it. Even a genuine actor is bound by the confines of the
role they have chosen to play, and the role of butler that Stevens plays condemns him to a
supporting role in a hierarchical world in which decisions are left to others. As a servant, he
willingly accepts severe limitations on what he can say or do. His role allows him to excel
in the smooth running of a large household, but not to have opinions on matters of state.
Another kind of artist more suited to the egalitarian temper of the times might see themselves
as contributing to the national narrative, helping to shape the character and distribution of the
22 外国语文研究 2018 年第 5 期 Foreign Language and Literature Research 5（2018)

roles that are open to individuals in society. This is the democratic view expressed by the man
in the village where Mr Stevens passes a night: “We’ve all got strong opinions here, and it’s
our responsibility to get them heard” (Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day 189). Stevens may
well be genuine in the performance of his role, but at the end of the day it is a very constrained
role.
Finally, we should perhaps be wary of being too critical of Stevens. It is true that he is
an anachronism and a relic from a world that has largely disappeared, or that lives on only in
television series such as Downton Abbey. But there is also a sense in which he is a cautionary
figure even for we postmodern subjects. At this point, we might return to my suggestion that
the novel as a whole is a metaphor and propose an answer, based in part on comments made
by Ishiguro in an interview (Ishiguro, “Kazuo Ishiguro on The Remains of the Day”). This
answer relies on elements of Stevens’ defence of his acceptance of the limitations of his role.
As he says near the end after his admission of lack of dignity in relation to his employer, it is
still the case that most of us rely on the judgment of others: “The hard reality is, surely that for
the likes of you and I there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands
of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services” (Ishiguro, The
Remains of the Day 244).
All of us perform roles and undertake jobs that remain to a large degree outside our
control. Most of us are remote from the centres of power in power in society. We learn
particular skills or functions that we perform, but the effects or the disposition of those
function remains largely outside our control. In this sense, Stevens’ condition is a metaphor
for the condition of most people in society. In effect, to a greater or lesser degree, we are all
English butlers.

Notes
① In the novel, the gathering at Darlington Hall took place in March 1923, but the fictional events most like-
ly allude to the lead-up to the Genoa Economic and Financial Conference, championed by the British Prime
Minister Lloyd George, that took place in Genoa in April and May 1922.
② The same phenomenon is invoked in Book Three of Plato’s Republic when Socrates asks “have you not
observed that imitations, if continued from youth far into life, settle down into habits and second nature in the
body, the speech and the thought?” (Republic 395d). In the context of Plato’s discussion of the appropriate
education for the future rulers of the republic, this poses a problem with regard to acting. The phenomenon of
role becoming character leads him to argue that the young guardians should not be allowed to play characters
less noble than they were expected to become, for fear of corruption. The young men and women should only
be allowed to impersonate the deeds of “good men”, particularly when these are acting “steadfastly and sensi-
bly” (Republic 396d).
③ On Reagan, see Brian Massumi, “The Bleed: Where Body Meets Image,” and the response by Paul Patton,
“Reagan and the Problem of the Actor” (Welchman 1996:18-50).
 Paul Patton：Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Nietzsche’s “Problem of the Actor” 23

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