The Buried Giant

“I don’t recall his face now at all…It must be the work of this mist. Many things I’ll happily let go to it, but it’s cruel when we can’t remember a precious thing like that.”

Axl, speaking here, laments a memory that was taken from him—a painful memory he will not get back until much later. The quote shows how even though the memory of his son may prove painful to Axl, it is more painful for him to have no memory of him at all.

“The oddly frozen stances of the tall man and the old woman seemed to cast a spell on Axl and Beatrice, for now they too remained as still and silent. It was almost as if, coming across a picture and stepping inside of it, they had been compelled to become painted figures in their turn.”

Here, Axl and Beatrice encounter the initial “dark widow” and boatman, both of whom, in different ways, signify death in the novel, with the dark widow tormented by the death of her lover and the boatman the figure who ferries the dying to the land of the dead. That Axl and Beatrice turn still and silent and come across as “painted figures” is Ishiguro’s way of foreshadowing the meaning of the widow and boatman’s respective roles before the reader is actually fully aware of those roles.

“Was there ever a time before we knew each other Axl? Sometimes I feel we must have been together since we were babes.”

Axl and Beatrice’s loss of memory serves to bring immediacy to their relations, but not in the positive sense of the words. Without a past, their relationship hangs on the thread of their present feelings—feelings they don’t understand why they have. In this way, they personify collective society’s ability to forget about a number of things, including love and war.

“I wonder if what we feel in our hearts today isn’t like these raindrops falling on us from the soaked leaves above, even though the sky itself long stopped raining. I’m wondering if without our memories, there’s nothing for it but for our love to fade and die.”

Here, Beatrice paints the fears she carries throughout the novel, ones that serve to highlight the larger theme of memory in the novel. Like the previous quote, this quote points to the immediacy of their love, one that does not seem to have a clear source.

“The dogs look calm but those Saxons look foolish with fear.”

Here, we see an example of the sectarianism that permeates much of the novel and the characters' attitudes towards one another. Saxons, in this example, and by comparison, are less than dogs in times of crisis. We see subtle comments from both the Saxons and Britons about one another throughout the novel, and the conflict between the two sides is Ishiguro’s commentary on contemporary society’s inability to recall past conflicts between cultures comprised of different theological majorities. 

“The stranger thought that it might be God himself had forgotten much from our pasts, events far distant, events of the same day. And if a thing is not in God’s mind, then what chance of it remaining in those of mortal men?”

This is just one of the many explanations for the loss of memory among the characters in The Buried Giant. The notion that an omniscient figure such as the Christian God could forget is both irony and dark humor, two further elements of postmodernism.

“It was just a thought. That perhaps God is angry about something we’ve done. Or maybe he’s not angry, but ashamed.”

Here, Beatrice extends the thesis of the stranger from the previous quote. Her idea proves to have merit, as the cause of the mist is to keep hidden the slaughter of innocents during the war.

“I was thinking maybe it’s because of our lack of a candle I first took this pain I now have?”

The candle, Beatrice claims, might have allowed sprites into their quarters—the same sprites that later wish to take her as a dark widow. The candle’s meaning is classic, in a sense, and represents memory that fades in the way a candle’s light will. 

“Slay Querig?! You really mean to slay Querig?!...But sir, this is a mission entrusted to me!...A mission entrusted to me by Arthur himself.”

Gawain, here, hides his true intention, instead claiming that he was the one who was to kill the dragon. He uses this rationale throughout the novel to try to hinder Wistan, who is on his own quest. 

“You’re much the senior in years, Master Axl, but in matters of blood, it may be I’m the elder and you the youth.”

Wistan understands more about Axl than Axl does himself. Axl, as the novel shows, is indeed a pacifist and shrinks from needless bloodshed and murder. Wistan, a more experienced warrior, believes in the need for revenge and bloodshed in times of war. 

“You are so certain, good mistress, you wish to be free of this mist? Is it not better some things remain hidden from our minds?”

A question the novel asks us is whether a loss of memory makes us happier or is better overall for us. This quote, a question asked by Father Jonus of Beatrice, lets on that, in the minds of some of the monks, people may be better off forgetting the past. It should be noted that the monks have a dark past that they’d rather forget, too.

“What Axl and I feel today in our hearts for each other tells us the path taken here can hold no dangers for us, no matter that the mist hides it now. It’s like a tale with a happy end, when even a child knows not to fear the twists and turns before.”

In response to the above quote, Beatrice shows the thread that she clings to regarding memory and its relationship to the love she has for Axl. She will take this feeling with her when she confronts the boatman at the end of the novel. 

“Yes, indeed, it was I who came to the abbot to warn of Master Wistan’s identity and intentions, what choice had I?”

Axl and Beatrice have learned, at this point in the novel, that the people in their company are not as trustworthy as they once thought. Gawain admits to his treachery, but still hides his true intentions from the couple. 

“So many skulls we trod upon before coming out to this sweet dawn! So many. No need to look down, one hears their cackle with each tread.”

Reminders of his actions taunt Gawain throughout the novel, who feels remorse for the murder of innocents during the war. He carries much of the blame entirely on his shoulders because he is the only one allowed to remember those events, for the time. Compounding his guilt is his protection of Querig’s mist.

“I didn’t know then, but know now, Querig’s breath was the thief robbed me, the very creature you were to have slain long ago.”

The “dark widows” are an embodiment of the guilt of Gawain. They exist as living testaments to what a lack of memory does to some loved ones and to the grieving. Memory is central to grieving, and the widows were robbed of this by Gawain and Merlin.

“I shall greet the boatman contentedly, enter his rocking boat, the waters lapping all about, and I may sleep awhile, the sound of his oar in my ear.”

While he feels guilt for his past actions, Gawain remains steadfast in his claim that he’s doing the will of God and clings to that notion. He also senses that, before long, he will be dead. 

“So you see, Master Edwin, nothing and yet everything had passed between us….Is it the she-dragon’s breath makes him forget whatever cause he once had to fear me, yet the dread grows all the more monstrous for being unnamed.”

Wistan relates the story of his feud with Lord Brennus. What’s notable about the quote is how it begs the question of whether anger doesn’t fester and grow larger in the absence of memory. For Wistan, it is his memory of the kindness of Britons that prevents a pure hatred of them.

“You’re drifting further away, Axl. I can hardly hear you.”

Beatrice feels an urgency to be free of Querig’s mist. She senses that she is dying and, along with that, losing all her memory of the relationship she and Axl once had. 

“Promise me you’ll hate the Briton till the day you fall from your wounds or the heaviness of your years.”

Because Wistan cannot hate the Britons himself, he hopes to pass along this hatred to his apprentice Edwin. His motive, then, is not as noble as it once seemed. Wistan frees the dragon to allow for the hatred of Britons to be rekindled in Saxon’s hearts. 

“Promise, princess, you’ll not forget what you feel in your heart for me at this moment. For what good’s a memory’s returning from the mist if it’s only to push away another?”

Toward the end of the novel, Axl’s fears about the love he shares with Beatrice grow as he remembers moments when they were not together and were angry at one another. He fears that, once their memories are restored, old hatreds and angers may overtake the love they feel for one another. Later, when with the boatman, Beatrice remembers this promise. 

“Some of you will have fine monuments by which the living may remember the evil done to you. Some of you will have only crude wooden crosses or painted rocks, while yet others of you must remain hidden in the shadows of history. You are in any case part of an ancient procession…”

This is a rare moment when the narrator of the novel provides context for the events, and appears here to bring significance to the place where the group meets the dragon, Querig. The place below where she sleeps has a kind of monument of stones, placed there to remember the innocents, killed in the war, though, no one can remember that’s the reason for the monument being there. The narrator asks us to think of all the monuments, whose intentions “remain hidden” like this one.

“You say now Querig’s breath keeps this from your mind, or is it the years alone, or even this wind enough to make the wisest monk a fool?”

Here, Gawain poses an alternative theory to the mist being the cause of the forgetfulness. The novel hints at this theory, and we wonder if there isn’t some credence to Gawain’s alternate theory. Maybe a literal explanation serves more to place importance on remembering than a mist ever could. 

“The giant, once well buried, now stirs. When soon he rises, as surely he will, the friendly bonds between us will prove as knots young girls make with the stems of small flowers.”

This quote harkens back to an early event in the novel. Beatrice tells Axl to move around a hill that is really a sleeping giant, so as not to wake it. This foreshadows the moments, when having awoke the giant—a symbol of memory—they now have to face the consequences of those memories.