The Portrayal of Outsides: A Comparison of The Turn of the Screw and The Remains of the Day Anonymous 12th Grade

The central narrators in James' The Turn of the Screw and Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day are both outsiders, in more than one sense of the word. Their job titles literally make them outsiders to the stories they tell, but in more subtle ways, they are portrayed as outsiders time and time again. These are explicit to the readers but not made clear to the characters until the end, when both have epiphanies about how they have been outsiders. Through these characterizations, James and Ishiguro show the discrepancy between reality and thoughts, and how they always catch up to each other.

In The Turn of the Screw, the governess believes herself to be as close as family with the children, calling them "my children". Despite this, she does note that they seemed to be "almost impersonal" and had "no history", an early sign that she has misjudged the situation, assuming a closer degree of relationship than the facts showed. The facts show that she is just a governess, and gets along well with the children, but not overly so. Her excessive doting comes from her being "under the spell" of the children, as she reflects upon later. By not fully knowing the reality of these children, she is an outsider. Her only external source is Mrs....