Silverware and Space: The Construction and Deconstruction of the Butler Figure through Object Metaphors in The Remains of the Day

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, a system of metaphors built around objects such as silverware, corridors, and banquet halls constructs a paradox of existence in which the butler Stevens dissolves his humanity in the pursuit of professional dignity. Silverware, as the material embodiment of the butler’s spirit, and the sacred ritual of its polishing—alongside the meticulous spatial order of corridors and other domestic spaces—together weave a disciplinary network of professional myth. This transforms Stevens’s sense of self-worth into a mechanical gleam and order akin to that of objects. Yet as silverware becomes historical evidence of Nazi complicity, and as the spatial order of Darlington Hall is restructured by an American businessman, both elements metaphorically expose the hollowness of professional dignity. The rise and fall of this system of metaphors not only deconstructs the emotional void Stevens conceals beneath the identity of the “great butler,” but also reflects the crisis of British cultural identity in the postcolonial era. When silverware is reduced to a historical relic and spaces of power are reshaped by the new world order, the individual’s adherence to "English dignity" becomes, like a drooping curtain, the last fig leaf of a fading empire.