The Remains of the Day

The Remains of the Day is structured along Stephen’s journey to meet Miss Kenton. The journey functions as a metaphor for Stevens’s introspection. The journey is a symbolic reminder of his discomfort with the modern world and represents the retrospective interrogation of his past. For example, the further he gets from Darlington Hall, the less comfortable and familiar he feels. This unfamiliarity forces him into his past, taking him out of his comfortable surroundings and exposing him to a new world he does not understand. The symbolic qualities of the journey are emphasized as it progresses: Stevens travels further and further from his comfort zone, exposing himself to increasingly uncomfortable situations. He even travels across Britain in a symbolic fashion, driving from the rich heartland of the English home counties toward the southernmost regions in the west country, leaving behind the rigid class structures of his past and traveling to a place where his accent and his clothes mark him out as one of the upper classes to whom he has dedicated his life’s service. In a physical, mental, geographical, and social sense, Stevens’s journey takes him from the familiar to the unfamiliar.