Never Let Me Go Analysis Essay

There are various forms of symbolism in Never Let Me Go. A main symbol in the book is the cassette tape that the song “Never Let Me Go” is played on. The song represents motherhood, and is about a mom and her child. The people at Hailsham are unable to have children, because they are clones. The name of the cassette is “Songs After Dark” which helps the tape symbolize how people feel before Hailsham and then after. Another form of symbolism is when Kathy was a kid, singing to her pillow baby. The pillow baby symbolizes Kathy’s inability to have kids because she is a clone.

The Theme of Temptation in “Where Are You Going , Where Are you Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates

The three themes that I identified in “I Couldn’t Keep It to Myself” by Wally Lamb, are the connections between abuse and incarceration, there’s a misjudgment on the people who end up in prison, and recidivism.

The theme of education is strong in all the past readings and research throughout the class. Institutionalized learning versus self-learning and the fact that education through institutions can sometimes fail the individual in the sense of systematic learning compared to academic knowledge. In Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, the institution of Hailsham helps shelter the clones, yet inhibits them. In Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Creature learns languages from his neighbors. The lack of an academic system causes a form of self-teaching. While self-learning is a form of self-realization as mentioned in Walter Kirn’s article “Lost In Meritocracy” Kirn learns from his experiences, Ellison from Invisible Man learns “street smarts” similar to the clones in Never Let Me Go in which the clones are also self-taught. In Frankenstein, the Creature learns from Victor, who is a selfish man who never loves the Creature. A cultured education is stemming from a higher self of education, which is self-experience enlightenment, instead of academic institution whose instructors do not know how to convey the information correctly in the example in Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, the guardians not being able to teach the clones of their origins or properly educate them to be human. Consequently, producing the clones have a wrapped sense of information and education which makes them unnatural in mannerisms.

Never Let Me Go is a prime example of moral conflicts in today’s society. While these issues are currently invalid in today’s current science world, the future in this may increase the potentials of what the world may be in a few years. This novel provides numerous moral conflicts: friendship, cloning, organ donations, conformity and honesty. The morals are not clearly clear cut, but they are hidden to point that a reader can be guided for to find morality. Just because the opportunity such as “cloning” and the possible advancement of it doesn’t necessarily mean society should enhance the

In “Lives of the Dead”, O’Brien’s own innocence is preserved through the memory of Linda, a memory that remains untarnished by the inevitable corruption that results from life. O’Brien’s writings “save Linda’s life. Not her body--her life” (236). Storytelling and memories preserve the value of Linda’s existence while simultaneously allowing O’Brien to process death and destruction in a way that maintains a degree of optimism regarding his own life and future. Juxtaposing the images of body and life emphasizes his desire to save the idea of Linda while accepting the loss of her physical presence. O’Brien rejects the idea of death as absolute and final; instead he suggests that “once you are alive, you can never be dead” (244). Linda’s death solidifies her importance in O’Brien’s own development; she teaches him about life and real love as much as in death as in life. O’Brien’s paradoxical statement defines the lasting impact of Linda on him; her presence in his stories keeps her alive through memory; memories that even her death

In both texts, fate is considered to be determined by a person’s position in the respective social hierarchies. While Ishiguro explains in his novel that most people accept their fate, Niccols demonstrates through the character of Vincent that each person has the power within themselves to create their own fate. Ishiguro adopts a non-linear storyline, where the majority of the novel consists of structural flashbacks into Kathy H’s life. The novel begins at the end, where the reader learns that the narrator’s name is “Kathy H” and that she has “been a carer now for over eleven years”. The fact that Kathy H explains at the beginning of the novel about her compliance with the cloning program foreshadows how all clones, including herself, will ultimately “complete”. Ishiguro structurally employs this nonmenclature to emphasise the irony of the clones "completing" what they were created to do in their lives. Contrastingly, at the beginning of Gattaca, Vincent was shown to already be living out his dream career. Niccols uses the structure of revealing this at the beginning of the film; instead of showing Vincent’s progression in a linear storyline, to explain how, dissimilarly to Never Let Me Go, fate can be changed. This demonstrates how fate is not dependent on a person’s social standing, but on the persistence and determination that one

Emily Dickinson is one of the most important American poets of the 1800s. Dickinson, who was known to be quite the recluse, lived and died in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, spending the majority of her days alone in her room writing poetry. What few friends she did have would testify that Dickinson was a rather introverted and melancholy person, which shows in a number of her poems where regular themes include death and mortality. One such poem that exemplifies her “dark side” is, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”. In this piece, Dickinson tells the story of a soul’s transition into the afterlife showing that time and death have outright power over our lives and can make what was once significant become meaningless.

I feel that this novel was written in a way for Kathy to process what had happened in her early childhood life as a child at Hailsham and then works towards building an understanding of her life as a carer and a future donor. Kathy also writes from the perspective that the audience knows what she is talking about in terms of not defining what carers and donors are which is a cue Ishiguro gives that lets the reader understand her perspective. In the moments when Kathy was talking about her time at Hailsham, Ishiguro would have Kathy talk in a way that was trying to clarify what she already knew. For example, on page 19 Kathy said, “Miss Geraldine was everyone’s favorite. She was gentle, soft-spoken, and always comforted you when you needed it, even when you’d done something bad, or been told off by another guardian.” Ishiguro provides these details through Kathy to explain how the life that these children experienced at schools such as Hailsham was something that only the people who have been through it can truly

The purpose of this critique is to analyze the various aspects of a modern family through the film, “This is Where I Leave You”. Different components of marriage, families, and relationships will be explored to better understand the central theme of the movie.

With this, we no longer can answer the important questions that ask “what” of our lives. We begin to care only about chasing after what we find pleasure or survival in.

Ishiguro’s critique of empathetic engagement in relation to a humanising education modulates into questioning the concept of empathy itself. In Never Let Me Go, the aporia presented in the clones’ understanding of their role in the world in comparison to the authorities ultimately frustrates opportunities for empathy. Madame’s witnessing of the young Kathy dancing with a pillow to the Judy Bridgewater song, Never Let Me Go, has been interpreted by Marvin Mirsky as providing a ‘replica’ of a baby, which is both a compensation for her own motherless state and her future infertility (2006, pp. 628-30). Madame’s empathy for Kathy is seen in Kathy’s realisation that Madame is watching the scene “...and the odd thing was she was crying. It might have even been one of her sobs that had come through the

In Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro the major themes in this book is hope, and free will. Hope plays as a symbol and feeling of freedom for the characters. Their curiosity is what causes their confidence to one day be free, but then is let down when having to face the truth that their life is set for them and that they must accept it. Free will is shown that clones are unable to change their fates as organ donors, but their lack of free will affects many other elements of their lives as well. For example, Ruth never achieves her dream of working in an office, and Kathy gets precious little time with Tommy. Ishiguro is ambiguous about where this lack of free will comes from because Ruth never tries to work in an

Throughout the novel, Ishiguro uses the euphemism “completion” for death, and the students are often confronted with the reality that this will eventually be their fate. The word completion suggests that they are fulfilling a sense of duty, but these characters do not internalize this meaning. This concept is not far from what most humans realize; namely, that at some point in time, our inevitable “completion” is inescapable. Ishiguro suggests we need to find out what makes our lives complete before the “end.” He creatively incorporates humanity’s attempt to escape from this future when Kathy and Tommy desperately search for a deferral. They hope the ability to demonstrate their true love to Madame and another Guardian will ultimately save them from their predestined “completion.” While Tommy undergoes the donation process at the hospital he rejects the identity that illness attempts to give him. He

Most people dream to have a great future, fall in love, get married, have a family, but most importantly have a wonderful life. What if your life had been planned out for you and the sole purpose of your existence was to donate your vital organs? Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go is a tragic love story between two human clones that fall in love before they know what love truly is. The clones are raised until adulthood in Hailsham, a boarding school for clones, to later become organ donors. They are trained to become nurses or “carers” to take care of “donors” as they recover after organs have been removed. The clones are involuntary forced to donate all their vital organs until death or until they “complete.” Kathy H. and Tommy are two clones whose love journey began when they were children within the walls of Hailsham. The two friends became close and confided in each other about everything. In time their friendship became into something more; however, Kathy and Tommy would find themselves in a love triangle. Before they moved to the cottages, where they learned to live among normal humans, Ruth, who was Kathy and Tommy’s friend, dated Tommy, but Tommy and Kathy loved each other. Their love would face many obstacles, but their love always found its way back to each other. In the end, with hope to buy their love some time, they find Madame to obtain a deferral but are faced with the devastating truth and would be forced to face their fate.