In ancient times, the Romans upheld values just like our society does today, standards that they cherished and celebrated. Among them were values of loyalty and duty, power and respect. Pietas and gravitas are two ideals are both quite evident in Stevens, the main character of the novel The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.
In the preface to the Aeneid, Bernard Knox defines auctoritas as “the power and respect won by men of experience, of successful leadership in war and peace” (p.14, Aeneid). In The Remains of the Day, Stevens contemplates the idea of “professionalism” – a sense of dignity and poise that all great butlers supposedly carry. Stevens’s father is a man that carries a tremendous amount of respect, from both Lord Darlington…
However, Stevens displays his own sense of auctoritas as well. There is a point in which Darlington puts together a gathering of influential people from around the world to discuss the situation in Germany, after the Great War. Lord Darlington instructs Stevens to attend to all the visitors’s needs, and so Stevens prepares himself and his team to receive the visitors. During one of the final dinner preparations of the conference, Stevens descends to the kitchen to witness “the brink of pandemonium…[and] an extremely tense atmosphere among all levels of staff” (p.97, Remains). He also recalls that an hour later, there was “nothing but efficiency and professional calm” (p.98, Remains) exhibited among his staff. It is implied that Stevens directed and eased the panic that the staff was feeling, to the point where in just an hour, the staff were back to their usual orderliness. That is no small feat, especially because of the graveness and importance of the conference in question. Even the behind-the-scenes work that Stevens and his staff…
14, Aeneid). The Romans believed that there was a duty to something more than one’s self that had to be fulfilled. This encapsulated not only their families and the gods, but also their country. While Stevens does not have a god he worships, or much of a family to be loyal to, he does have an authoritarian figure in his life in the form of Lord Darlington. As butler under Darlington’s command, Stevens’s duty is to carry out what the lord wishes to be accomplished, and to anticipate any requests he might have in advance. The conference in which Stevens displays his auctoritas also reveals his pietas. In the middle of the same dinner that Stevens rallies his staff during, Stevens’s father is afflicted with a stroke, and dies (p.109, Remains). While various other staff people beg Stevens to come speak to his father before he takes his last breath, he refuses, citing the importance of this conference to Lord Darlington. Stevens is determined to not fail his employer, and to show the full capacity of his service. Although his father is his family by blood, Stevens’s pietas lies with his lord. This differs with the Roman ideals, for it is not his kinsmen or his country that he reserves his loyalty to, but a different man that pays his wages and expects him to obey his commands without fail.
Stevens displays the Roman ideals of pietas and auctoritas, but not necessarily in…
