Death

This story is set in post-war Japan, so Ishiguro uses many characters and symbols in this story to explore the older generations of Japanese people’s mentality and ideology as it has been affected by the war. Ishiguro uses character development and symbolism to establish dark undertones of death throughout the story, explore the nature of Japanese post-war mentality, and demonstrate how this mentality has affected the younger generations.

A deathly atmosphere persists and builds throughout the story, and Ishiguro introduces this atmosphere in the very first line of the story. Ishiguro begins the story by describing “Fugu” (207) and its deadly qualities. Because this atmosphere of death appears at the very beginning of the story, all of the remaining plot events take on sinister undertones. For example, at the end of the story, when the father serves fish for dinner, one might ordinarily assume that this...