When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro - An Analysis of the Novel's Ending

SPOILERS

England, 1930s. Christopher Banks has become the country's most celebrated detective, his cases the talk of London society. Yet one unsolved crime has always haunted him: the mysterious disappearance of his parents, in old Shanghai, when he was a small boy. Moving between London and Shanghai of the interwar years, When We Were Orphans is a remarkable story of memory, intrigue and the need to return.

When you read the description of Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans you are inclined to expect a literary version of the Sherlock Holmes novels, with the added element of a family tragedy. You expect, certainly, a brilliant detective, who will ultimately solve the mystery of his parents’ tragic disappearance. You expect the solution to be revealed at the end, with some flourish and bravado, à la Poirot, everyone gathered in a room – the detective showing off his tricks like a magician. But of course, that is not what the novel is – and even though repeated descriptions of Banks’ successfully completed cases carry a shadow of the Poirot and Sherlockian mastermind ethos, the main storyline is anything but.

Ishiguro’s writing style throughout the novel is akin to holding your breath – there is always a piece of information that is not revealed, not quite yet. He holds you in suspense almost throughout the entire book – the end of each paragraph alludes that there is more to the scene than what we just witnessed.

There are a few significant relationships in the book. Banks’ relationship with his childhood best friend Akira, the girl Jennifer he quasi-adopts and whom he leaves behind guiltily in London when he heads to Shanghai to find his parents in 1937, his beautiful mother and his father who are a constant companion in his memories, and finally Sarah Hemmings – the elitist socialite who wants to be more than just a woman, and who thinks she can achieve this by being with significant men. She portrays one of Ishiguro’s frequent themes of love that never quite comes into being, of his characters building something up in their head. Banks evidently likes Sarah – but circumstances always deter them from developing a relationship.

However, leaving aside these aspects, what I mainly want to focus on and what truly struck me was the novel’s ending. Banks returns to Shanghai after many years to resolve the mystery of his parents’ disappearance. There are many comical moments where authorities ask him, the celebrated detective, for advice on how to prepare for the welcoming ceremony when he finally finds his parents – somehow no one seems to entertain that they might be dead or that Banks might not find them.

When the solution is revealed to us at the very end of the novel, it seems laughable that we ever believed Banks’ hypothesis that his mother and father were tragically abducted because they were activists campaigning against the rampant opium trade and simply made powerful enemies. There is a haunting scene where Banks pursues a lead to a safe house for smugglers where he believes his parents may have been brought to. He strikes out through the firing line of the Second Sino-Japanese War, fighting with Chinese officials to let him continue onwards into the active war zone from the relatively safe foreigners’ enclave.

The crucial clue is with someone Banks used to know as Uncle Philip – a family friend who was a frequent presence in the Banks household when he was a child growing up in Shanghai, and who campaigned against the opium trade together with his mother. By the time Banks is an adult and has returned to Shanghai Uncle Philip has become embroiled in the political chaos, he is a Communist double agent. From the time of his arrival in Shanghai, Banks is aware of this mysterious influential informant who is protected by the Kuomintang government, he has a suspicion that this informant will be able to help him find his parents, or at least find out if they are still alive. Eventually, he figures out that the informant is Uncle Philip – but it is about the only puzzle that Banks manages to piece together correctly.

Banks thought all these years that his father was abducted first, closely followed by his mother. But instead, he learns from Uncle Philip when they eventually meet, that his father left both his mother and him. He left for no other reason than that he felt emasculated by his wife – her constant high expectations to take a moral stance on things. Uncle Philip reveals that he always lusted after Banks’ mother, who is so beautiful, but that she never returned this interest, even after her husband left her to be with his mistress in Hong Kong.

Instead, Banks’ mother became the object of desire for a Chinese smuggler and warlord. There is a crucial scene recounted earlier in the book, where Banks’ mother is angry at the warlord at a meeting when she realises that he does not want to help stop the opium trade, and that he simply wants to take it from the British and trade with it himself. Banks remembers the scene vaguely, where she runs after the warlord out onto the street at the end of the meeting, screaming. At the time Uncle Philip professes, that he thought she would be assassinated.

What happens instead is that the warlord takes a liking to her, and wants to have her as his sex slave – he liked her ‘spirit’, the idea of breaking her, and the pleasure of taking a white woman – the exoticism.

I have seen the term ‘the unreliability of memory’ connected with this novel. It is true that most of the novel is a maze of disparate memories, with Banks wandering from path to path, struggling to connect the different clues. But I think ‘unreliability’ is ill-suited as a descriptor. Banks has a fairly detailed and accurate memory of his childhood and the events leading to the disappearance of his mother. His memory is not so much unreliable, as it is ‘misinterpreted’ by him – at the time he was a child and did not understand many actions around him. He witnesses several times where his father is ashamed and feels belittled because of his wife’s high expectations, or where it appears that his mother may have taken a liking to Philip because of his stance on the opium trade. It therefore comes as a surprise when Philip reveals that he always lusted after his mother (his own words), but that it was evident that she did not return the interest.

To the reader, this comes as somewhat of a shock, because of the many moments where Banks witnessed moments where it seems undeniable that his mother developed an interest in Uncle Philip, so much so that Banks’ father notices. Children are perceptive, incredibly perceptive, often noticing things that adults do not. To me, this indicates a possibility, that perhaps, if Philips had pursued Banks’ mother and genuinely shown her his interest, she may have opened up to him. Banks’ memories indicate that his mother did indeed have an interest in Philip, which perhaps she felt too shy to return immediately after her husband’s disappearance. But Philip’s feeling of having been slighted, of not getting what he felt he deserved – the prize of ‘the beautiful woman’ – is sufficient for him to let the atrocity take its course. And so it does.

There is a moment where Philip professes that he could not possibly have done anything to protect Banks’ mother from the warlord once he voiced his desire to take her for himself – so Uncle Philip simply took away Banks at the time of the abduction of his mother. It is true that he probably saved Banks’ life by doing this. If he had been present the warlords’ men would have likely just killed him – and Uncle Philip makes himself feel better about his actions by framing it this way. But then, as the conversation with Banks continues, Ishiguro introduces an interesting psychological twist. Uncle Philip flips and admits that if he had set his mind to it, he could have protected Banks’ mother, that he could have taken her to safety.

He tells Banks how the warlord treated his mother once he brought her to China, that he beat her in front of his guests. “Taming the white woman.” And Uncle Philip admits that he took pleasure in this, many times – he liked the idea better of Banks’ beautiful mother being humiliated and punished by someone else because he could not have her for himself, or felt that she did not want him.

He also tells Banks that his mother struck up a deal with the warlord, where he would send money and funds to her son in return for her submission and her promise that she would not take her own life.

Uncle Philip tries to shame Banks by telling him this – essentially making it out as if his mother’s abduction and her repeated humiliations were his fault. Because Banks received the money throughout his life and was able to build his career as an accomplished detective, his mother was unable to kill herself and had to endure the atrocities at the warlord’s hands.

He knows how Banks’ mother was treated by the warlord because he visited the warlord’s home one last time, and witnessed these acts himself. He even seems retroactively annoyed and almost repulsed at her that by the time of his visit, she did not care anymore about the opium trade, that her only concern was for her son, and that she only wanted to know if he was safe.

Whilst shocking, this resolution of the underlying mystery appears more realistic, more complex and infinitely more obvious. A man’s enjoyment of subjugating an unresponsive object of his lust. It is very gripping to read Uncle Philip’s words, his description of these acts, his self-disgust and his self-denial.

He asks Banks to shoot him, ‘like a rat’. But Banks leaves stating that he will find his mother.

He eventually finds her, after reports emerged of a white woman, confused and old, having been located somewhere in China as the war came to a close – the novel concludes with him finally meeting her at Rosedale Manor in Shanghai. The nuns inform him that she likely spent most of the war years in an institution for the mentally ill, and was only handed over by the Chinese after the war ended because they wanted to get rid of all the foreigners. She is very old by then; she has dementia, and does not recognise Banks. There is one brief moment during their conversation, where she remembers her son when he mentions the nickname she used to have for him as a little boy: Puffin.

“For a long time my mother said nothing, but the expression on her face had now changed entirely. She was looking up again, but her eyes were focused on something over my shoulder, and a gentle smile was creasing her face.

‘Puffin,’ she repeated quietly to herself, and for a moment seemed lost in happiness. Then she shook her head and said: ‘That boy. He’s such a worry to me.’ […] Then she beamed again happily ‘That boy. They say he’s doing well. But you can never be sure with that one. Oh, he’s such a worry to me. You’ve no idea.’”