What is greatness? Is it something a person is born with, or something a person can acquire over time? Does a person's greatness depend on their social status, or can their greatness be defined within the bounds of their social status? This is what the main character in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day is trying to figure out.
Greatness is indeed something which Stevens seems caught up in throughout the novel, but only greatness that he can lay some kind of claim to. It is easy to see, from the passage starting with "Now I am quite prepared- and ending with " this quality is probably best summed up by "greatness."," (28) that Stevens holds his country, along with his profession, as something that outshines most other things. For instance, when he is serving guests at the conference at Darlington Hall, there is a moment when Mr. Lewis, the American Senator insults Lord Darlington, calling him an "amateur" (102). Lord Darlington then points out that what Mr. Lewis refers to as professionalism he himself calls "getting one's way by cheating and manipulating." (103). Stevens quite obviously approves of his employer's attitude, because Lord Darlington is, in Stevens" eyes, a great English Gentleman whereas Mr. Lewis is just an American; the sense to me is that though Mr. Lewis has the superficial title of Senator, he comes from a political system that allows common people to pick other common people to be leaders, and therefore lacks the actual dignity and greatness possessed by Lord Darlington as a man of noble mind.
Stevens makes frequent references to the Hayes Society, especially when he talks of the great butlers of the past. He struggles with the comprehension of the society's guideline that "an applicant must be attached to a distinguished household," (32) thinking that it was perhaps too selective of the society, but he eventually admits that the problem wasn't in the guideline itself but in how you interpreted it; the Hayes society meant a family that was old and noble, whereas with Stevens" generation the idea of a "distinguished household" had taken on a deeper meaning to encompass an employers" private behavior (114).