In the novel Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro uses diction and metaphor to reveal the fear that society has for clones. Kathy, the narrator of the novel, and the the other children at Hailsham are clones. In the passage, some students from Hailsham, including Kathy, are curious about Madame’s feelings regarding them, so they construct a plan to swarm her as she walks into the main house. They are not prepared for the response they get; Madame freezes and looks as if she is someone with arachnophobia looking at spiders. Kathy and the girls are shaken up because of the cold moment they are experiencing, and it feels as if they had just seen themselves as something other than what they had always felt like. She says, “And I can still see it now, the shudder she seemed to be suppressing, the real dread that one of us …show more content…
The word shudder means to tremble, usually as a result of fear, and the word dread means to anticipate fear. Both of these words reveal Madame’s true feelings about the clones because she feels scared by the thought of them accidently touching her as they walk by. In addition to his diction, Ishiguro also uses metaphor to tell of the fear that people have for clones. In the same passage, Kathy explains Madame’s reaction to their plan. She says, “But she was afraid of us in the same way someone might be afraid of spiders” (Ishiguro 35). Madame fears the clones the same way someone would fear “spiders”, an eight-legged predatory arachnid that can inject poison into their prey with their fangs. Kathy explains that in that moment, her friends and her feel as if they were all that predacious insect. Spiders are generally feared because they have the potential to hurt you, and because of this, they are avoided and hated. Like spiders, clones are feared because not much is known about them. Society views them as items that can be used for their own
This fear of the unknown is similar to the one shown in Gordon Grice’s essay, “The Black Widow.” In his essay, Grice explains how his fear of black widow made him curious about them. He once feared black widows because most people associated black widows as deadly animals that kill people. However, once Grice said, “I fell, hands first, into a mass of young widows … In about ten minutes my arms carried nothing but old web and the husks of spiderlings eaten by their sibs. I have never been bitten” (47). This revelation for Grice shows that black widows aren’t what he had thought them to be, but in fact mostly harmless to humans. “We want the world to be an ordered room, but in a corner of that room there hangs an untidy web. Here the analytical
Rejection is one of the issues associated with social prejudice in Shelly’s novel. The monster in Frankenstein is abandoned because of his hideous features. Victor, who was his creator, cannot look upon what he has brought to life. Victor explains, “I beheld the wretch-- the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs” (Shelly chapter 5 p 43). The monster responds to Victor as a child who looks to his father for reassurance and acceptance. Though the monster was not a child in his physical appearance, his emotional state was that of young child. Since the 1890s, researchers have conducted studies called Parental acceptance-rejections t...
Fear is an unexplainable feeling that is caused by a certain someone or something. Fear plays a significant role in the novel We Have Always Lived in The Castle. With tiny details she gnaws away at things that seem unimportant until the ending of the book. As Shirley Jackson first introduces Merricat, making the reader love this strange, broken girl, then revealing her true nature, one will see how everyone fears Merricat. Constance’s fear of Merricat, the fear that the villagers have for the Blackwoods, and Merricats fear of being without Constance, shows it is evident that fear caused all the major issues in this book.
Think about a scary moment in your life. How did you handle the situation? How do you feel about how you handled it? Do you regret your actions? Everyone, at some point, is scared of something. Each person has different fears, reactions, and coping skills. Arachnophobia the fear of spiders and/or other arachnids leaves some crippled with fear, making them clam up, people with arachnophobia may avoid any situation where there could be a spider or even be paranoid about spiders under their toilet seat. A crippling fear has the power to alter a person’s life. The Central theme or universal lesson of Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Short Happy Life of Francis
The creature displays his hatred toward Frankenstein for leaving him immediately and not providing guidance and protection in this harsh, new world by murdering his family and friends. While seeking his creator, the creature first murders Victor Frankenstein’s youngest brother William and exclaims, “I too can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him” (Shelley 144). The creature wishes for Victor Frankenstein to suffer taking his own companions away, forcing him to be miserable as well by destroying his personal relationships with others by murdering loved ones. Through the rejection of the creature because of his physical appearance, he learns what is accepted as well as how you can treat another being as he succumbs to his anger and proceeds with his crimes. The creature tells Frankenstein, “your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish your happiness forever.
This reaction originates from a preconception, a fear caused by the human nature to prejudge based on past experience. This prejudice is indeed the source of the pain and torment in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. If a "monster" exists in the novel, it is this aspect of human nature. Works Cited Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein.
An author’s way of writing and portraying a character are one of the important things to note when reading a novel. Whether they use third or first person as their view point, have their main character have an underlying dark secret that is not revealed until the end of the novel. However an author wishes to write their novel, there is always a drawback to it. Kazuo Ishiguro’s way of writing his novel Never Let Me Go is in a first person perspective where the narrator, Kathy H., reassess her life of being a clone but the way Kathy remembers and discusses her memories of living in Hailsham is hindered by the fact she inputs her own feelings and thoughts into what happened in the past.
Fear brings forth a certain atmosphere which compels us to act upon it. The era in which the book was published allows us to see how common these fears were. Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is an excellent portrayal of how fear controls the human mind by using the characters as examples. In the book Eleanor, Theodora, Luke, and Dr. Montague have all been influenced by fear in the story, whether it be the fear of love, the unknown, family, rejection, expression, or loneliness. These different types of fear plagued their minds causing their actions to reflect upon them. Jackson explores the theme of fear in The Haunting of Hill House by creating a cast of characters that in turn are manipulated by the inner workings of their minds and the
Have you ever had something ever get to you or make you you scared? That is called fear and tons an tons of people have different fears. Fear is an emotion that makes you feel afraid or something is frighten. Some fears many include spiders, clowns and even death. ‘’Fear Prompts Teens To Act Impulsively’’ by Laura Sanders, ‘’Stress for Success’’ by Alison Pearce, and ‘’And Uncomfortable Bed’’ By Guy Maupassant all explain the idea of fear.
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.”
A clear example of the use of diction to provoke fear is seen in Chapter IV. Mary Shelley uses words such as “wretch”, “yellow skin”, “horrid”, “white sockets” and “shriveled” to describe the monster, thus making our stomachs churn. Later on, she uses words such as “livid”, “grave-worms”, “crawling”, “dim” and “convulsed” to describe a terrifying nightmare Victor Frankenstein, the main character, had had the night his monster came to life.
The author selects techniques of diction such as connotation, repetition, and onomatopoeia, to establish the fear is the overall excerpt. He manipulates connotation to enhance the mood. As the character is driven about the midnight landscape by the mysterious coachman, he notices the “frowning rocks” hanging over the road, a “ghostly flicker” of blue light which he cannot explain and off in the distance the “long agonized wailing” of dogs. The word “frowning” allows us to see that this is no happy setting, even the rock that cannot feel is frowning and not smiling. The author uses the word ghostly to describe the flicker of light. Light usually portrays a saving or some sign of hope. By using ghostly as a descriptive word, he makes it seem supernatural or like it’s faintly there. If he wanted this to be a sign of hope he could have worded it a flickering light, but he did not causing the character to feel fright and no hope. The utilization of repetition by Stoker applies reinforcement to the atmosphere. Throughout the excerpt the narrator continues intensifying the effects by also repeating phrases such as “another and another.” By repeating these words the reader is being reminded of the alien emotions and surroundings of such a strange place. The use of intensifying repetition strengthens the negative connotation words following directly before or afte...
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
‘Frankenstein’ did not frighten me at all, I merely found it a very tragic story demonstrating both the corruption of an innocent being by an immoral society and the dangers of playing God with science. Frankenstein was responsible for the creature and as soon as he showed signs of life, instead of deserting him due to fear and embarrassment because of the ugliness of the creature, he should have taught the creature right from wrong and accepted him as a person, not a monster. Any brutality in ‘Frankenstein’ was due to Victor Frankenstein himself and not his monster.
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...