Essay
The short story A Family Supper by Kazuo Ishiguro takes place in Japan in the capital Tokyo, where the narrator, a son visits his father and sister because of his mother’s death. Throughout the whole story, the reader gets the impression of a son who hasn’t lived his life after his parent’s ideology. The differences of two generations are in the story interpreted as very big and very clear. The culture clash and the generation gap are thereby two important themes in the short story. The writer Kazuo Ishiguro tells the story through his fictive character, the unnamed protagonist; “the son” who serves as the reliable first person narrator. The narrator cares much for his father but struggle to express his feelings, and it is here the themes are especially revealed, through their relationship, and the lack of so. He has for some years been living in California in America, which is one of the many disappointments he has worried his parents with. Silence in the story is a motif. The struggle of communicating in the family seems realistic compared to the difficulty in communication between the traditional Japanese generation’s culture and the newer generations. The antique cultural and the generational differences provides the center piece of the short story, a lonely father a widower and his children nourishes a deep love for each other, but how to put on words to describe their feelings seems for them, impossible. The story needs to be interpreted through what is said, but most important in this particular story, is what is not said. Silence is a dominate motif within the dialogues which occur. The silence can be understood as confusion from the narrator, confusion of who he is, what he is doing with the people surrounding him and to the life he has led up to now. The narrator nourishes a deep respect for his father. He describes his father as a “formidable-looking man”(Line 7), which suggests he is a bit afraid a him. This is further