Nostalgia: Good or Bad?

Is nostalgia considered to be good or bad? To answer this question, we must first look at the definition of nostalgia to make sure we fully understand what it is.

Nostalgia, according to a dictionary, is defined as a bittersweet longing  for persons, things, or situations of the past. Sights, sounds, smells, and taste all may evoke nostalgia. The second definition is a condition of being homesick or homesickness. In these senses, nostalgia seems to be a positive and good thing according to the dictionary.  According to some journals and other sources, it refers to the moral pain of a person when he is overcome with the obsession of return. The results of this obsession can result in a state of desolation and physical malaise can be established, which can be fertile ground for infection and functional disorders. However, I believe it depends on the extent on which an individual dwells on it and whether they are good memories or bad memories which are being recalled.

History can be viewed to be colored with nostalgia. Many times, we refer to look back at "the good old days", which can be looked at as around the 1950s. We are course referring to a more conservative time where individuals were more mannered and ethical. Uniformity and conformity were popular at this time. The war was over, the economy was booming, and the nuclear family was present. Older individuals constantly see this time as a period of happiness and refer back to it. But the other side of this time is overlooked where there was widespread poverty, unhappiness by women to be stay at home moms, a decade of McCarthyism, fear of the atomic bomb, and the rise of the civil rights movement, which is probably looked at by younger generations. Perspectives play a part in this as you can see. Good and bad times are subjected to nostalgia throughout history and our literature. 

 Literature abounds with powerful nostalgic works which contain both sides of the spectrum of nostalgia. Some are motivated by early memories of a pure, more innocent psychological, as well as physical, place which there is no possible return except through memory. Others link nostalgia with subjective and often unreliable vagaries of memory with troubled individuals who are either disturbed by their past or are struggling to maintain composure in their life, which often leads to them making a big decision or change. This can be seen as a dangerous aspect of nostalgia.

In Kazuo Ishiguro's novel "An Artist of the Floating World", there is a sense of nostalgia in the main character Masuji Ono. It is set in post World War II Japan and Ono looks back at his life and how he has lived it. He has selective memory on which he leaves out certain events to the reader which might tarnish his character. Good times are remembered and referred to many times throughout the novel. The day he gave a recommendation for a job to a son of a friend of his shows this bright and clear. He explains how good it made him feel. Through some of the other characters in the book, we can see that he was not always the calm and kind person he is to date in the book. His daughters make this clear in a conversation they have with him and how he has changed. Through the book, he notices how his once great reputation has faltered since the war and how attitudes towards him and his paintings have changed. It seems as though that the chief conflict deals with Ono's need to accept responsibility for his past actions and get out of his nostalgic view of his past.  Basically he is disguising a world fraught by regrets, unresolved  emotional conflicts, and a deep yearning to recapture (and make sense of ) the past.