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Never let me go literary analysis
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Literary analysis of the novel never let me go
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In the novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, a group of clones take a unique journey through adolescence. These clones are modeled after real humans, and they grow up with the knowledge that they will one day die donating their vital organs to the aforementioned. In their early lives, the clones are quarantined in a boarding school from which they are not allowed to leave. As the group grows older though, they split up and move to separate houses where they are given more freedom. Most of the clones spend their last couple years in these houses before they are summoned to begin donating. Strangely, none of the clones attempt to counterattack any of this. They willfully follow all directions and accept what is told to them. The clones in …show more content…
While the process of donating is fairly straightforward and familiar, living in the outside world is something they have never practically considered because of its ambiguity. The first time the clones ever visit the outside world is when they’re all in their early 20’s, which is exceedingly late into one’s development. Imagine a child raised in one specific area surrounded by the same exact people, and then given freedom to leave home once they are fully grown. The child would be scared and uncertain because of how grossly unfamiliar the world would appear. These clones are in the same situation. Although the clones do have dreams to explore the world, they are still frightened by the concept of a new life, and never take action to fulfill their desires. Ruth, for example, has big plans for her ‘dream future’, “Ruth began telling us about the sort of office she'd ideally work in, and I immediately recognised it. She went into all the details—the plants, the gleaming equipment, the chairs with their swivels and castors—and it was so vivid everyone let her talk uninterrupted for ages” (Ishiguro 144). However, Kathy shows a different side of Ruth when she describes the scene where the clones huddle together after they are first dropped off at the Cottages, their new home after Hailsham, “...somewhere underneath, a part of us stayed like that: fearful of the world around us, and—no matter how much we despised ourselves for it—unable quite to let each other go” (Ishiguro 120). Ruth is a good example of how most of the clones presumably felt; they spend their time daydreaming about an alternative life, but when the time for change comes, they prefer to envelop themselves in their old ways and traditional
...ith a view of the lives of these students. “We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.” (260). This quote reveals that not all of society is ignorant to these clones, and those who personally interact with them are able to see how immoral their existence truly is. Unfortunately, to most of the public, the idea of their existence being a cure for many deadly diseases, overrules the concept of their unjust treatment. “ There was a lot of support for our movement back then… before we knew it all out hard work had come undone… people did their best not to think about you.”(262 – 263). Even after the public revelations of the clones’ lives is exposed, and sympathy towards them starts to grow, people quickly change their minds and choose to ignore them, leaving them defenceless.
The clones know what they were created to become and the death that awaits them. In Ishiguro’s novel, the “donors” are told exactly what will happen to them. Their guardians tell them that they’ll “start to donate [their] vital organs” (81) before they are even middle-aged adults. This news is very heavy and is broken to them in such a light way. Knowing their gruesome future, the clones begin to fear their fate. To which the guardians think “Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?” (254). Even here they attempt to sympathize with their tortured creations but still fail to realize that it is all their doing. The humans have created a being destined to die serving a race that does not really care for them. Just like Ishiguro’s characters, the clones in Blade Runner also fear their death. Unlike those in Never Let Me Go, these clones are told the exact date of their death. Knowing that they are going to die sometime the clones hunt down the humans that know their exact fate. When you ask “how long do I live” (BR) and the answer is “four years” (BR) there is no one way to react. Any normal being would be filled with rage which is exactly what these clones
What if there was a world with clones? There would be a way to live for up to 100 years effortlessly, have easy transplants, and maintain a precise memory. But, the recipient would be taking organs from someone else. "So what", he or she may justify, "they're clones, they are inferior. They don't matter because they are stupid." But what if someone had the power to allow them to be of normal intelligence? He or she might think that he or she is doing the clone a favor, but when the clone is killed for spare parts it's an even worse situation than with a retarded clone. Not for this "bandido" (Farmer 37). El Patron is a cruel, selfish, heartless man who clawed his way to power in his youth and rules people with fear, though he is powerful, he is always nagged by the fact that he may lose everything. There is no way on earth he would let that happen.
In Never Let Me Go, the clones(Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth) experience isolation from the outside world, but not from people altogether. At Hailsham the clones were raised in a semi normal way with no real knowledge of what they were made to do and no real knowledge of their isolation from the outside world. They did normal things like play sports, gossip with friends and attend class.”About our guardians, about how we each had our own collection chests under our beds, the football…”(Ishiguro 5). At Hailsham they are not individually in isolation, but in isolation as a group. Because of this the effects from isolation that was present in clones from other places, was not present in Hailsham students until later in life. Once they get to the
How Choices and Symbols Define Tommy in Never let Me go In Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro one of the more interesting symbols is Tommy’s river. Tommy says, “I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong.”
... then they’ll complete” (282). Kathy finally tries to validate her being a carer by saying, “Of course it’s important. A good carer makes a big difference to what donor’s life’s actually like” (282). In saying this, Kathy believes that she is needed for another reason other than donating her organs. Kathy is challenging her fate as a clone by staying alive under the pretense that she is needed as a carer.
The act of human cloning raises important socio-ethical implications in cases where cloning might change the shape of a family's structure by mixing the role of parenting within a family of complex relations. An example of this is when a female DNA donor would be the clone's genetic twin, rather than mother, complicating the genetic and social relationships between mother and child as well as the relationships between other family members and the clone. The ethical questions we need to ask in these situations, specifically one where a child is genetically bred to be a donor is whether doctors and parents producing another child are doing so exclusively in order to act as an organ donating factory, and also the moral question of how the child would feel about the process. Designer babies produced to save the lives or health of their siblings or parents would know that they have been brought into existence solely to satisfy a need and not out of love for their own existence. If the creation of these babies is allowed, it would seem like society views these new human beings as mere instruments for the good of others. This causes serious socio-political, economic, ethical and religious upheavals in societies that have only just began to realise and embrace the
Living in a world where they have successfully created human clones for organ donations, is not a great achievement to mankind in any way, shape, or form. It makes you wonder, where exactly do you draw the line between the advancement of technology and the dehumanization that occurs because of it?" Never Let Me Go is a Novel based in the main character Kathy’s memories of her experience in Hailsham and after she left. Hailsham is a boarding school for children who have been cloned from people considered as low life’s or unsuccessful, the only purpose given too these children are for them to develop into adults and donate as many of their mature organs as they can till they die, or as the students and guardians refer to it “complete”. The author focuses on the sick ways of our current society and warns us about the possible future that may be introduced and excepted, Kazuo Ishiguro writes with the intent of teaching and affecting the reader on an emotional level at the same time.
It is set in alternate “England, late 1990’s where human beings are cloned and bred for the purposes of harvesting their organs once they reach adulthood. These "clones" are reared in boarding school-type institutions” (Cusk. 2011). The reader follows retrospective and episodic accounts of these experiences through a series of flashbacks from the main protagonist and point of view of ‘Kathy H’ introduced in the beginning of the novel as a “thirty-one year old carer” the only option available to the clones in which they can experience any sense of normal societal life i.e. employment, their own transport and accommodation (Ishiguro. 2005: 3).
Half way through the novel the reader finds out that Kathy, and the other Hailsham students, sole purpose in life is to grow up and donate the his or her vital organs. To the reader, it is confusing why the students do not just run away. However, the way Ishiguro wrote Never Let Me Go it makes sense that they do not. Throughout Kathy and the other student’s lives, they have constantly done what the majority of the students did. Ignorance is why Kathy and the others do not run away from their inevitable deaths. The students simply did not know anything other than growing up to become a donor. All of their lives they have been molded to follow the popular idea, so to the students become a donor is exactly what they want to do with their
When denied by his creator he seeks revenge and kills everyone Frankenstein cares about. In Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go people are cloned and the clones are sent to live at Hailsham, a boarding school for clones. When the clones reach the age of about twenty-five they are taken to donate their organs. When all of their organs have been removed or they die they have completed. Two of the children at Hailsham-tommy and Katie- fall in love; they final realize that they are meant to be when tommy is almost completed. They both end up completing and later on the program is shut down. Ishiguro and Shelley force the reader to contemplate the negatives of scientific progressions. Although Shelley and Ishiguro present some similar ideas, their stories are too different to be considered the same. Most in literary culture view Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go as a contemporary interpretation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, although both authors’ works deal with similar concepts the differences between the creators and
How do the actions and words of a society affect the way people act? In Never Let Me Go, author Kazuo Ishiguro depicts a society in which individuality is threatened by the pressure to conform through methods such as peer pressure and social expectations. Without a doubt, peer pressure is most commonly found in schools today just as social expectations are suffocating the middle class’ desire to become their own unique person.
The limitations decreed by the superstructure are a prime illustration of the restriction of acceptance and the exploiting force set upon the clones, causing an unaccomplished life coupled with premature death. The structure’s denial of parents for the clones provides an emptiness and lack of connection that needs to be present within any child. Ruth seeks acceptance from one of the guardians, Miss Geraldine, due to her regard as the closest thing to a parental figure, “ There was a certain smile, a certain voice Ruth would use- sometimes accompanied by a finger to the lips or a hand raised stage-whisper style- whenever she wanted to hint about some little mark of favour Miss Geraldine had shown her…” (Ishiguro, 57). During class at Hailsham, the children are babbling innocent...
As a reader, it is given only Kathy’s perspective, which makes it difficult to know the history of the society, and how the donation program began. Since our understanding is to segregate the parentless, cloned children from the society until Kathy learns this herself. Kathy herself does not explicit question her origin, but rather notes and accepts the mysteriousness of it “There was an unspoken agreement to allow for a mysterious dimensions (Ishiguro, 2006, p. 123).” Much of Kath’s life as a child hailsham is marked by a vague awareness that she does not
...en through the example of Nickolas Green, when you donate organs you not only save one life, but often numerous. Your body has so many vital organs and tissues that can be donated and given to many different people. For many of these people, what you donate to them, can be a matter of life or death. If they don?t receive a donation soon enough, their time will run out and they will pass away. By donating organs you are giving of your body, something that will never again by seen after death. You are making the morally correct decision to help others. It seems we are all brought up to help others and give of yourself, and what better way to do so then by donating of your organs.