When We Were Orphans

“It was indeed a concept that fascinated me, this notion that he was in some mysterious way connected to various of the higher walks of life, even though he looked and behaved no differently from the rest of us. However, I cannot imagine I ‘mercilessly interrogated’ him as he had claimed. It is true the subject was something I thought about a lot when I was fourteen or fifteen, but Osbourne and I had not been especially close at school and, as far as I remember, I only once brought it up with him personally.”

From the outset, Ishiguro introduces the concept of unreliable memory, which he connects to Banks’s reliability as a narrator, indicating that his preferred memories might not make him objective. Additionally, his early observations mark him as unconscious of a combination of elitism and insecurity with which he approaches the upper classes in England, a foreign country to him.

“What I saw was a small, rather elf-like young woman with dark, shoulder-length hair. Even though at that moment she was clearly wishing to charm the men she was talking to, I could see something about her smile that might in an instant turn it into a sneer. A slight crouch around her shoulders, like that of a bird of prey, gave her posture a suggestion of scheming.” 

Banks’s first sighting of Sarah indicates much about her character and his view of the young woman. He sees her as “elf-like,” suggesting an otherworldly quality, a being of beauty with powers that can help or hinder. He recognizes her cynical charm because it corresponds to his own. The fact that he describes her as a “bird of prey,” and then proceeds to fall in love with her tells us about his character: Banks knows, understands, and loves trouble.

“For gradually, from behind his cheerful anecdotes, there was emerging a picture of myself on that voyage to which I took exception. His repeated insinuation was that I had gone about the ship withdrawn and moody, liable to burst into tears at the slightest thing. No doubt the colonel had an investment in giving himself the role of an heroic guardian, and after all this time, I saw it was as pointless as it was unkind to contradict him. But as I say, I began to grow steadily more irritated.” 

This quote is another indication of Banks’s unreliable memory. He projects onto the Colonel negative feelings because the image the older man presents of Christopher as a child does not match Banks’s improved version of himself. Diction in words such as “insinuation,” “heroic guardian,” and growing “irritated” implies that Banks believes the Colonel wants intentionally to belittle him, but Banks does (and cannot) offer any rational reason why.