When We Were Orphans

Ishiguro closely connects Banks’s orphanhood with his psychological development: Having lost his family, Banks has to provide himself the framework for his confidence, lacking in familial love and support. His orphaned state decides his occupation as well – as mentioned, he becomes a detective nurturing the fantasy of one day finding his parents by solving the greatest mystery of his own life. The disappearance of first his father and then his mother takes away from young Christopher the sense of stability and leaves the boy unmoored and without a steady presence in his life. Ishiguro implies through the memories of others that Banks takes his new circumstances very badly, just as any child would: he cries a lot, he feels lonely and abandoned. His new life in England is a dramatic shift that Banks feels incapable of surviving unless he develops a new persona, one based on a different set of self-projections that allow him to develop confidence. However, Ishiguro frequently shows us that Banks’s self-assuredness is skin-deep, and that he easily feels swayed by the strong undercurrent of negative emotions. In fact, these hidden feelings of rejection and abandonment provide motivations for all his actions, as Banks moves through the novel pursuing the peace that only a reunion with his missing family might offer.

Similarly, Sarah Hemmings deeply feels the lack of her own parents, especially her mother. She too develops a personality based on her orphanhood—a desire to be of use to others, of helping someone achieve greatness—because it is only through this sense of high achievement that she feels alive and deserving of life. She marries the elderly Sir Cecil, believing that only she can stir in him the necessary fire to reach new levels of greatness. When this proves elusive, as all fantasies do, she attaches her hopes to Banks, recognizing instinctively their similar driving forces. Ishiguro portrays Sarah with a hint of desperation, a woman who in the social system of the 1920s cannot acquire her own agency, like Banks does, but has to attach her considerable energies to a man she can support. She dies “offstage”, seemingly happy, as the author deliberately removes her from Banks’s story, confirming that in their desperate zeal, such people as themselves have room for only one obsession.

Banks’s protégée, Jennifer, is another orphan whose parentless state determines her psychological development. Banks attempts to provide for her the elements he has missed as a child, yet he also sends her to boarding school (this was much the custom of the time period), and his restlessness carries him away from her presence for prolonged periods. Even as a child, Jennifer attempts to prove her worthiness by being helpful and undemanding, with the implication that she too feels the need to “purchase” her place in the world with her dedication and goodness. Through the detail of her attempted suicide, Ishiguro reveals the darkest side of this deep sense of displacement, one that Banks and Sarah share, albeit in different ways, but he also provides a hopeful ending in her desire to marry and raise a family. Even this desire might be fantasy of someone who wishes they could feel they belong.