When We Were Orphans

Connected to the symbol of orphanhood is Akira, Banks’s childhood friend, who in the novel represents belonging, safety and togetherness, which is something most orphans sorely lack. Banks’s memories of Akira are acutely alive, and he holds onto them because he has poured into these memories of his friend all of his fears and uncertainties and transformed them into the image of a loyal and trusting companion who offers unconditional support. Ishiguro positions the symbolism of Akira’s presence as a direct opposite to Banks’s state of orphanhood.

The symbol becomes even more potent once Banks is back in Shanghai and keeps seeing what he believes is the adult Akira everywhere he goes. Similar to some children’s imaginary friends, Akira is a safety net that Banks still needs when he feels insecure or alone. This is especially evident in the scenes in the Shanghai warrens in the war zone, where Banks’s mind transforms an apparently random Japanese soldier into Akira. His need for the sense of safety that Akira symbolizes for him is so strong that he imagines his friend’s presence in the moments where he is most vulnerable, searching in vain for his parents, and knowing subconsciously that it will be impossible to find them. In the same way, it is impossible for Banks to find Akira, at least in the form he has been looking for as the childhood friend he remembers. Banks needs what Akira symbolizes and not the man himself: he needs a companion that forms a part of himself, he needs to feel he is sharing his plight with someone supportive, and although adult, he needs to “play detectives” again with his childhood friend.

That Banks would grow up to become a detective seems an inevitable choice from the way Ishiguro portrays the character. Once his father has disappeared, young Christopher and his friend Akira develop a game of detectives, an elaborate fantasy in which the two boys investigate the disappearance and construct various scenarios in which they discover the location of Christopher’s father and save him from the enemy. Ishiguro utilizes detective work as another symbol of coping with the harsh and unpredictable realities of life. Through the idea of detective work, Banks finds the possibility to invite order back into the unpredictable chaos of his own life and, by doing this work professionally, into the lives of others. Thus, through the power of detective work, Banks helps not only himself feel more secure and at peace, but others as well. Ishiguro gives Banks, through his investigative work, a chance to fantasize about discovering his parents once again, just as he did when he was a child. This fantasy is what maintains the psychological structure of the adult Banks.

Additionally, Ishiguro chooses to utilize tropes of detective fiction in his work as a way of strengthening the symbolism of Banks's profession. In such fiction, authors often portray the detective as a powerful entity that brings stability and tranquility back into the world that a crime has disrupted rudely, throwing the persons involved into an existential fear of lawlessness. However, the author here subverts the trope by robbing Banks of this final agency, as he proves incapable of solving the case of his life: it is Uncle Philip, the Yellow Snake, who reveals to him the meaning behind the disappearance of his parents. This shows that detective work also represents a vain attempt to impose one’s will onto a reality that is endlessly powerful in its unpredictability.

The disappearance of Banks’s parents is the leitmotif of the novel, as it arcs through the book from beginning to end and provides crucial motivations and plot developments. Losing his parents in such a way does not allow the child Christopher to gain closure; he lives in perpetual hope that he will one day be able to find them. If his parents had died, he would have been able to move on, but this way, he remains stuck with the tantalizing possibility that they might be reunited. His parents’ disappearance causes the changes in his personality that form his grown-up self and make him decide to become a detective. Ishiguro utilizes this motif to show that one event can motivate a lifetime of repercussions, both conscious and unconscious. Everything Banks does connects to his parents’ vanishing: his memories change to fit his need for support and love he misses form his family, and he chooses to live a life of a loner because he fears connection and further loss. Additionally, Banks grows obsessive about the whereabouts of his parents, and he dedicates most of his life to building a detective career that will help him search for them.

In the latter parts of the novel, his obsession over his parents’ vanishing results in a sequence of irrational acts of desperation, as he roams the war-torn warrens of Shanghai in search of the elusive house that he has persuaded himself holds his parents. Banks cannot live his live fully (or rationally) because there is a central hole inside of him, which he feels only the finding of his parents can fill. That is why he misses the chance to make a new life with Sarah—the fact that his parents are missing does not allow him to move forward with his own life. At the end of the novel, he manages to locate his mother, and in an ironic twist, Ishiguro depicts the scene in a way that still refuses closure for Banks: his elderly mother does not recognize him and only remembers the child he once was. This plot choice is significant because deep down, Banks himself is still that child she remembers—he has not found the strength to grow up fully after his parents’ disappearance. However, having seen his mother, he finally manages to persuade himself that her love for young Christopher represents his love for him as an adult as well, and the novel ends on a promise that Banks might now be able to move on with his life.