45 pages • 1 hour read
Kazuo IshiguroWhen We Were Orphans
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “LONDON, 24TH JULY 1930” - Part 2: “LONDON, 15TH MAY 1931”
Chapter 1 Summary
In summer of 1923, Christopher Banks moves from the University of Cambridge to London. There, he encounters his old school friend James Osbourne, who invites him to a classy dinner. Banks remembers how in school he used to envy Osbourne’s “well connectedness,” because Banks became an orphan in Shanghai, where he grew up. He used to copy the mannerism of other boys just to blend in, and it irks him that Osbourne remembers him as an “odd bird.” He remembers his fascination with crime and detection and that his friends gave him a present of a magnifying glass. In Shanghai, he used to play detectives with his Japanese friend, Akira, but living with his aunt in Shropshire, he felt that he had to hide his interests.
In the present, Banks is a detective. As he arrives to the Charingworth Club that evening, Banks is disappointed that the world of financiers and ministers has no room for great detectives, who belong to a different class of people. He remains “standing about frozen with awkwardness” (13). Banks sees a small, dark-haired woman who captivates him–Sarah Hemmings. He learns from Osbourne that she used to be engaged to a famous composer, but she left him after a disastrous concert.
Banks learns more about Sarah. Many people disapprove of her “forthrightness” and call her a snob for always surrounding herself with famous people. One day in the Waldorf hotel, Banks introduces himself to her, expecting the success of his first big case to recommend him, but she reacts coolly.
Chapter 2 Summary
Banks encounters Colonel Chamberlain, the man who chaperoned him on his journey from Shanghai to England as a parentless child many years ago. He takes him to dinner, recalling their first meeting in the grand offices of his father’s trading company, Morganbrook and Byatt. The child Christopher wanted to remain in Shanghai, as he believed the detectives were still searching for his parents. The colonel begins to reminisce about the journey, and this irritates Banks, especially as the Colonel remembers young Christopher as a moody and tearful child. Banks has memories of himself as adapting quite well to the changes. Leaving Shanghai was for Banks leaving home, and he could not see England as his rightful home, as the Colonel claimed.
In the years after his meeting with Sarah in the Waldorf, Banks continues to build his reputation. Soon, he begins to hear from various people that Sarah would like to talk to him, as they had once been good friends. Eventually, she finds him during one of his investigations, and she flatters him for having “the most brilliant investigative mind in England” (33). She asks him for a favor; Banks has an invitation to the Meredith Foundation dinner in honor of Sir Cecil Medhurst, and she wants to be his companion. Banks refuses her, but she tells him she means to be there anyhow.
Chapter 3 Summary
As Banks arrives to the Claridge’s Hotel for the dinner, Sarah rushes to meet him, dressed impressively. Banks, however, steels himself and refuses her company, causing her anger. Soon after, he notices a disturbance at the foyer, and he realizes Sarah is loudly demanding entrance to the party, triggering a small scandal. They finally allow her inside, and he sees Sarah approach Sir Cecil confidently to start up a conversation. After dinner, he catches her eye, and she smiles at him.
Banks meets Sir Cecil, who confides he believes there are many evils lurking in the world, waiting to cause another global war. Banks asks the man about his time in Shanghai, and if he has met his childhood friend, Akira, but Sir Cecil does not recognize the name.
Later in the evening, Banks joins Sarah on the balcony, and she asks him if her determination surprised him. She tells him she too lost her parents early, but she is ambitious and does not want to look back on her life and find it empty. She wants to marry someone to whose life and goals she can contribute and make a better world.
Chapter 4 Summary
Banks recalls his childhood in Shanghai, in the house his father’s firm has leased them in the International Settlement, which was fenced off from the rest of the city. Young Christopher believes himself intellectually superior to his friend Akira, but the Japanese boy is more agile and adventurous. He often tells stories of his secret forays beyond the Settlement, which Banks believes. Akira has a special respect for Christopher’s mother, who is a great beauty.
The company occasionally sends in inspectors to examine the property. Banks recalls an instant when one of these men objects to the friendly treatment of the Chinese servants; Banks and Akira hear Banks's mother react with indignation. The inspector points out their addiction to opium, and this infuriates the mother, especially as it is Morganbrook and Byatt who are importing Indian opium into China. Christopher’s mother is a strong campaigner against the opium trade, together with Uncle Philip, a family friend who always has time for Christopher. However, Banks is now no longer certain whether he has not conflated his memory of the event with another fight his mother had with his father on the same topic.
One afternoon, Banks finds himself at a luncheon with several acquaintances and Sarah. The two leave the party and take a bus ride, Sarah remembering how she used to ride the bus with her ailing mother. Banks tells her about Akira and of how they stole something when they were 10 years old.
Chapter 5 Summary
Banks recalls the fight between his mother and father. He is in the library with his nanny, Mei Li, when his parents storm into the dining room, closing the door. Christopher goes to listen in at the door. His mother rages about “the sinful trade” in which his father is involved. His mother speaks the words that Banks later conflates with the inspector’s visit, only she tells them to his father, “How can your conscience rest while you owe your existence to such ungodly wealth?” (70). As opposed to his father, Uncle Philip runs a philanthropic organization meant to improve the life of the Chinese in the city, and Christopher’s father feels unequal to him. Uncle Philip has an untidy office and calls Christopher by his family pet name, Puffin.
Banks also remembers a conversation with Akira about the fights their parents have. Akira claims, based on his experience, that Christopher’s parents stop talking when they are unhappy with the level of Christopher’s Englishness. He decides to talk to Uncle Philip about it and asks if he might copy his behavior, as he is very fond of him.
Chapter 6 Summary
At age nine, Akira becomes quite irritating to Christopher in his glorification of everything Japanese. He is about to leave for Japan to continue his education there. After his departure, Christopher misses him. During this period, he remembers how after one of his mother’s meetings about overcoming the opium trade, Uncle Philip stays for lunch and invites them all to the racecourse. Even though Christopher senses his father does not want them to go, the boy agrees with fake enthusiasm.
Banks also remembers how his father, ordinarily a modest man, bragging about his good standing with the company and the Chinese during this time. He even says to his son that he is now a better man than he used to be, thanks to his mother. He refers to an incident that Christopher has trouble remembering. As an adult, Banks believes it happened when he was about five years old, when he and his mother overheard his father sobbing in his study. Banks's father shouted to his wife that they would never be able to get back to England, “Without the firm, we’re simply stranded” (86).
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
Kazuo Ishiguro employs a complex structure when it comes to the temporal setting of the novel’s storyline. The frequent shifts in time (and occasional spatial changes as the action moves between England and Shanghai in various time frames), accentuate the impermanence of the protagonist’s grasp on his own life structure, as Banks seems to continually inhabit a liminal space between the past and the present. His inability to reconcile his past life in China with his British present has obvious roots in the trauma the sudden disappearance of his parents has left upon his fragile child’s ego. Ishiguro thus utilizes the time and space fluctuations to position Bank’s orphaned state as the central and defining characteristic of his personality.
Banks’s many personal insecurities, disguised as they are even from himself, become apparent to the readers through his encounters with first his school friend, Osbourne, and then with Colonel Chamberlain and Sarah Hemmings. The author structures these meetings as crucial in understanding the fickle and self-deceiving nature of Banks’s memory while commenting on the general profound subjectivity of the process, as each character holds their own version of past events: these events have become stories rather than histories. Additionally, Ishiguro shows Banks conflating several memories into one (as exemplified through his mother’s bitter exchange with the inspector and her husband), indicating that Banks has built up a complex framework of suitable life stories to support his ego throughout his psychological development into a young detective. Even his choice of profession then seems slightly ironic, as his job is to reveal the ultimate truths, while his own past life remains elusive (and Ishiguro will continue to explore this throughout the novel). His connection with Sarah, on the other hand, has no basis in the past, except through the similarity of their histories: Sarah is an orphan like Banks, and both characters take this fact as proof they belong to a shadowy group of people whose experiences have shaped them differently than others: This is an instant bond between them. Ishiguro portrays Sarah as a woman with clear goals of becoming useful to a deserving man, a difficult role for a single woman in the 1920s. Both she and Banks are set apart by their lack of parental support and a traditional family life, which connects clearly to the novel’s title.
Another significant aspect of this part of the story is the depiction of the International Settlement in China at the turn of the 20th century, which Ishiguro renders understandable to the reader in its complexity by relating it from the perspective of Banks as a child. The British presence in China is colonial in its essence (Uncle Philip sums it up perfectly: “the country could be run virtually like a colony, but with none of the usual obligations” (288)). Companies like the one Banks’s father works for achieve this by facilitating the opium import into China, creating chaos and tragedy amongst the Chinese population and controlling the political and social narrative. Young Christopher and his Japanese friend Akira do not grasp the significance of what their parents do, but Ishiguro utilizes Banks’s memories to offer glimpses of a child’s ability to take an almost casual note of crucial events and retain their emotional significance without necessarily understanding their import at the time.
By essentially dividing the protagonist into two entities, the adult detective Banks and the child Christopher, the author implies a critical disconnect between the character’s understanding and acceptance of the past and his ability to participate in the present. Thus, Banks’s state of orphanhood becomes a literal and metaphorical trait of his personality.
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