Journal of Literature, Languages and Linguistics www.iiste.org ISSN 2422-8435 An International Peer-reviewed Journal DOI: 10.7176/JLLL Vol.56, 2019 7 Conjectural History in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Novels: A Pale View of Hills, When We Were Orphans, and The Buried Giant El Habib EL HADARI PhD student in Interactions in Literature, Culture and Society, Sultan Moulay Slimane University, Beni Mellal and ELT supervisor at the Directorate of Beni Mellal, Morocco Abstract Upon leafing through the pages of Kazuo Ishiguro’s works, it is easily discerned that there is a laudable attempt on the part of him to make of history an integral part of the fabrics of his novels. There is a remarkable endeavor to plow up past events and paint them with a tinge of fiction. There is that constant oscillation between the past and present. The narrative structure of his novels is fundamentally carried through the memories of their characters including the protagonists- the first-person narrators. Taking this into account, there is a ringing plea to question the rationale behind Kazuo’s heavy reliance on memory and deliberate use of history. This article seeks to shed light basically on the conjectural dimension of history use in Ishiguro’s literary works, focusing namely on A Pale View of Hills, When We Were Orphans, and The Buried Giant. Keywords: Conjectural history, facts, opinions, interpretations, forgetfulness, and journey DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/56-02 Publication date:May 31 st 2019 Introduction Being concerned with history is deliberate for Kazuo Ishiguro. According to him, the act of remembering or forgetting the past is a societal issue. It does not concern only individuals but societies at large. On March the 17th, 2015, in an interview conducted by Tina Srebotnjak in the Appel Salon, he expresses his interest “in this question: how does a nation, how does a society decide when it is better to remember things? And when it is better to keep certain dark memories just buried?” He states that many “societies grapple with this question: to what extent should we remember our past? To what extent should we forget it?” Really important to note is that Ishiguro’s use of history is basically conjectural in nature. This concept of conjectural history was first used by Dugald Stewart in the 1790’s in his biographical account of his friend Adam Smith. It simply refers to the process of superseding historical facts with conjectures to fill in certain gaps in human history. In this context, Stewart (293) says that there are moments when there is a necessity to replace or supplement facts with conjectures. This means that people interested in history look basically for facts and evidence, but in cases of the absence of this factual evidence, they resort to conjecture to compensate for it. This conjectural gap-filling dyes history with a special fictional touch. Resorting to conjecture in dealing with history is a debatable issue. Some say that being conjectural is a way to neglect facts and evidence and favor theory [Meek (1976 231) and Coleman (1980, 775) when they comment about Adam Smith’s dealing with historical facts]; Wightman (1975 54) accepts this gap-filling when there is no direct evidence (cited in ibid). Brewer (2008, 5), calls this conjecture a judgement that the historian has always to use “to construct a comprehensible narrative”. This is to say that the historian’s personal touch is always present when it comes to narrating stories using both facts and conjectures. Conjectures are no longer attractive to the cult of facts. Such thinkers as Ranke in the 1830’s describe the task of the historian as showing things as they really happen, giving a sort of faithful microscopic meticulous account of facts as they are without any fictional cosmetic additions. The Positivists, a group of Western philosophers who advocate the idea that data should be collected basically from experience, say that facts should be ascertained first and then conclusions can be drawn from them (cited in Carr Hallett, 2008: 9). Here, facts are distinguished from conclusions. Carr Hallet (2008: 9) calls this the commonsense view of history which is seen as a corpus of ascertained facts. He compares facts in documents to fish on the fishmonger’s slab and the task of the historian is to collect them, take them home, cook and serve them in whatever style he or she wants. The idea is that “first get your facts straight, then plunge at your peril into the shifting sands of interpretation - that is the ultimate wisdom of the empirical, commonsense school of history” (ibid, p 10). Facts are the starting-point in history, and interpretations are the spices which give a special flavor to it. Thus, facts are given the top priority. This is reminiscent of C. P. Scott’s dictum: “Facts are sacred, opinion is free” (ibid). It is also reminiscent of A. E. Housman’s quote: “Accuracy is a duty and not a virtue” (ibid). Giving accurate facts is the historian’s responsibility that he or she should not be praised for. Carr Hallet (2008, 10 and 11) compares “praising a historian for his accuracy” to “praising an architect using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building”. Upon reading his works, it doesn’t require much to spot Kazuo’s straightforwardness in the use of history and the role it plays in chronicling the changes that occur to human values as time passes on. His characters