A Family Supper

“A Family Supper,” though short in length, contends with many themes including death, suicide, nostalgia, family, estrangement, and loneliness. The story is set in Japan an untold number of years after the Second World War. The time and geographic setting are left deliberately vague, giving the reader a sense of being unmoored. Without proper markers to help ground readers in specific time periods or spaces in Tokyo, readers are left adrift, forced to make assumptions and connections based on the details given in the text. Ishiguro uses these techniques to make the piece ambiguous. The mood of the work echoes the drifting, wandering nature of the story’s narrator. The narrator has nothing left for him back in California, and yet he appears unwilling to stay in Japan. He is trapped between two different states of being, just like the ghost of his mother that he sees walking through the garden. Ishiguro’s “A Family Supper” is best likened to a glimpse into purgatory. Every character in the story is stuck between two places, torn between disparate paths. The narrator is unsure if he should stay in Japan or return to America, his