Kazuo Ishiguro. The Buried Giant. Vintage, 2016.
The Buried Giant is a fascinating story. The bulk of the tale focuses on an elderly couple in sixth century Britain, when the Celtic Britons and the Germanic Saxons were vying for authority on the island. It is very rich. It also does not hurt to know a little something about early British history and the King Arthur legend.
Prior to the unification of England into a single country by the Angle Raedwald (c. 606-613), and soon superseded by the more numerous Saxons, the territory that became England was a collection of tribal Britons and six Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Historically, we do not know much about the “real” Arthur (Arturus) who united the Britons, ruling London by A.D. 518 and dying in battle in 538.
There are, then, about two generations of warlords, called kings in Old English, from both Celts and Anglo-Saxons whom we know little about. Ishiguro imagines that life under and after Arthur is relatively peaceful until the Anglo-Saxons rise up against their Briton neighbors towards the end of the century.
Like the Arthur legends and other tales from this time period, there are ogres and monsters on the island. So when the aging Axl and Beatrice, Celts who live in a Saxon village, decide to travel over land to join their son in a different village, they are aware that besides the possibility of thieves or marauding mercenaries, there can be various creatures and enchantments to get in their way.
It is a strange adventure, not as weird as Cacciato’s flight to Paris, but magical nevertheless.
We understand that over the years Axl and Beatrice have developed a great love for each other. Indeed, they could almost be called a British Philemon and Baucis. Axl addresses her as Princess much of the time. Both Axl and Beatrice have a vague idea that some time in the past each spouse was not as faithful one way or another as he or she could be, but it is all very nebulous, and they are confident in their love now.
You see, most of Britain has come under a spell. People all over have forgotten most things that have happened to them. It is as if there is a plague of amnesia. People are aware of the plague, but there seems little they can do about it. A few old-timers say that it is caused by the monster Querig, a dragon that annoys the populace from time to time. They say that the plague will not end until Querig dies or is killed.
In their travels Axl and Beatrice meet a few people who have been trying to kill Querig: a Saxon warrior named Wistan, three orphaned children who try to feed it a poisoned goat, and the elderly Sir Gawain, nephew of King Arthur and one of the few survivors of the Round Table.
There are also untrustworthy boatmen, old families from Roman times, a strange monastery whose monks seem to be divided on a certain crucial truth, and Edwin, a Saxon from Axl and Beatrice’s village who has been exiled because he was bitten by a monster and therefore deemed to be a bearer of a curse.
On one level, it is an adventure not unlike The Hobbit, in which some unlikely people find themselves caught up in a crucial series of events. But at its core, it is something much more.
Is it necessary to forget in order to love? “For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34, Hebrews 8:12) That is part of God’s promise to those who trust Him.
But also we are reminded of the cliché that history is written by the winners. (Tony Horwitz notes that is not always true, e.g. The Lost Cause or Gone with the Wind, but it generally is). Sometimes our historical memory becomes selective.
Yes, we live in an age where every hero is in the process of being cut down. I confess that I am happy to see statues of Jefferson Davis torn down, but let’s not dismiss the writings of Thomas Jefferson or the vision of George Washington simply because they owned slaves. That is fallacious reasoning, a good example of poisoning the well.
Traditionally, King Arthur is a hero. What if he were really just as human as the rest of us? Not gross and uncivilized the way Mark Twain presents him in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, but simply flawed like the rest of us? Does our memory, become selective? How have people dealt with this historically?
The buried giant of the title is neither the giant fox our pilgrims encounter underground, not even the monster Querig, whom they discover in a quarry-like pit, but something else entirely, and much more significant than even The Hobbit’s Smaug. This is great stuff.