Few people see the irony that Arthur — the mythical king who sleeps beneath a lake ready someday to save England at its most desperate hour — appeared in early medieval literature as a Celtic Briton warrior fighting the invading Germanic Saxons. Those invaders, along with the Anglos, would eventually become the English that the mythic Arthur now protects. Whether or not Arthur actually existed, those of his people who were not killed, enslaved or assimilated were within a few generations pushed into the far west of Britain. Of course, it’s not uncommon for conquerors to appropriate the mythic power of those they’ve conquered, consider the name of our own city. Such is the mutability and tenuousness of memory.
Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, “The Buried Giant,” looks at the relative merits of memory and forgetting. Set in the years between the death of Arthur and the renewed Saxon invasion, Ishiguro creates a stark, misty landscape: “Miles of desolate, uncultivated land; here and there rough-hewn paths over craggy hills or bleak moorland…Icy fogs hung over rivers and marshes, serving all too well the ogres that were still native to this land.”
The reasons for war have been forgotten and Saxons and Britons live side by side in peace. But there’s a sinister side to this loss of memory — the mist that makes the two peoples forget their old enmities also erodes all other memory. People who move away or die are forgotten; parents can’t remember their children, soldiers can’t remember what they’re guarding against, lovers and spouses can’t remember how they met or what has happened in their years together. Even the ogres lose track of their reasons to go marauding in the villages.
It’s in this setting that an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice, set out to find their son, who lives somewhere in a village to the east. They can’t remember why he left or where he is, but Beatrice in particular is anxious to find him before she dies. Ishiguro thus reverses the usual tale of the mythic journey, in which a young person sets out to find his or her destiny; instead, Beatrice and Axl are on the last journey they will take in their lives.
That’s only the first of many reversals and ambiguities Ishiguro creates. There are hints early in the book that the war between Britons and Saxons and the peace that Arthur created are not particularly chivalrous. The couple crosses the plain where a giant is supposedly buried – but it’s also the haunted plain where the opposing armies met and slaughtered each other. Later, there are references to the mass slaughter on both sides of women, children and old people. Only the mist of forgetfulness keeps the two sides from avenging old wrongs and preserves the memory of Arthur as a merciful and just king.
Similarly, the last aging survivor from King Arthur’s court, Sir Gawain, appears to be hunting a dragon oppressing the land. However, despite hunting her for years, Gawain never manages to find his dragon. When Wistan, a Saxon warrior, appears with the same goal, Gawain actively discourages him from seeking her. It gradually becomes apparent that one is a politician and the other a secret agent, hiding far different and conflicting purposes.
The old couple are also not quite who they seem. Axl, apparently just a poor peasant, stirs vague recollections in both Wistan and Gawain. And the deep devotion between Beatrice and Axl becomes shaky any time they remember bits of their long lives together. Yet Beatrice in particular wants to remember, and, after hearing that somehow the dragon is associated with the mist of forgetfulness, Beatrice pushes the two of them to join the hunt.
Using slightly archaic description and formal dialogue like “He gives good account of his errand here, sir” or “I beg you consider why he comes to our country,” Ishiguro effectively evokes the mythic Britain we know from the Arthurian romances and stories, as well as the compelling mystery of the mist. He does well characterizing Axl, Wistan and Gawain. However, Beatrice never becomes more than a shadowy companion for Axl, despite her role in moving the plot forward. At times the plot moves quickly, with narrow escapes and surprising turns of events. But at other times Ishiguro’s plot seems unnecessarily complicated and even redundant. The book proceeds through hints and ambiguities up to the climax, when the mist is suddenly gone and many things become clear as the “buried giant” of memory is released.
Able finally to remember, Beatrice and Axl know where to look for their son. But there’s more that they remember. Ishiguro’s underlying purpose is to ask whether the price of remembering is worth the cost. He leaves the answer ambiguous. Unfortunately, by using only hints and allusions, he diminishes the strength of his own story which, after all, is propelled forward by the reader’s desire to discover what those lost memories are.
"The Buried Giant" | BY Kazuo Ishiguro | Alfred A. Knopf | 2015 | Hardcover | 317 pages | $26.95