Never Let Me Go Character Analysis

The death of Coral’s son has caused an emotional breakdown as she cannot accept her son’s death. Moreover, Coral has lost her social identity and tends to struggle to find a connection with anyone, as she “can’t think of anything to say” (Act 2, Scene 2). Her husband, Roy, is annoyed by her bizarre attitude and this causes Coral to lower herself to the behavior of a naïve child “I’ll be good! I’ll improve!” When Coral does begin to speak, it is presented as very expressive and mournful. Her tone is filled with emotion as she is constantly “wiping away tears”.

Instead, Ishiguro introduced the readers to the creation’s point of view. The novel portrayed them as beings with complex humanness rather than mindless monsters, preventing them from being reduced to simple antagonist. The trio - Kathy, Ruth and Tommy - are students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school for cloned children whom were born and raised solely for the purpose of organ donations. Never Let Me Go whisks the reader into an alternative world of 1990’s England and into the lives of these children, a world filled with much light yet as much darkness. What hides behind this boarding school was deceit and manipulation. While there was art and literature classes, all education was geared towards conditioning the students to fulfill their predetermined responsibility - the sole task of organ donation. The children have no concrete knowledge outside the walls of Hailsham as they were sheltered from the brutal reality of their fate. However at the same time, sheltered from the alienation and fear of their existence. To the outside world, they were nothing more than a disposable vessel carrying replacement organs. Thus, frightening to those who didn’t hold the same fate. But, also not “human enough” to deserve human rights. This results to the perplexity of the trio as they are torn between the identity they established themselves and the identity the world defines them as. Yet no one attempted to question or escape this parasitism relationship. Or is it simply because one acclimates to their environment? But perhaps no amount of pondering or pursuit of another dream could ever change the inevitable outcome. After all, it is society that ultimately decides their fate: creation of life and loss of life. Even the children maintain this

In Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, the main character, Kathy, and the rest of the characters are raised in Hailsham, a very special type of school. The kids who are raised at Hailsham do not have any parents because they are clones. Essentially, the teachers or the guardians, as they are called in the book, are their parents. Yet, the guardians raise the kids in a very particular way. The guardians are not affectionate towards the children, as most parents would be, and they raise them in an extremely structured setting. The guardians do not bond with the children because, although the guardians at Hailsham believe the kids are more than just clones, society still looks at them as creatures. The way the guardians raise the children at

The use of diction and metaphor in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go emphasizes on the social inequalities in the dystopian society. At this point in the novel, Kathy is reflecting on her childhood at Hailsham, specifically upon the moment when she and the rest of the clones realize that they are different. The clones/children come across this epiphany when they decide to crowd around Madame to see her reaction. Better transition to this sentence? Ishiguro’s use of the phrase, “the moment when you realize that you really are different to them…who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you” (Ishiguro 36) highlights the obvious distinction between humans and clones. The expression “shudder at the thought” demonstrates the amount

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 "Never Let Me Go", The novel begins by capturing the life of Hailsham, a mysterious boarding school designed to raise "special" students by dooming them to a determined fate of relinquishing their internal organs. As they grow older, the students are sent to complete their given tasks which are aided by specific "training" and eventually relocation to different hospitals in order to becoming a donor or "carer" for the donor before becoming one himself. Ishiguro focuses more on the emotional side of his characters by developing very sensitive relationships between the "clones", as they reflect upon their childhoods and set out to find answers to many secrets about the isolated gates of Hailsham. As a result, numerous themes are used freedom and free will, language and commumication, fate, power, class distinction. Also various techniques are used as narration style, symbolism,settings and the importance of the title.

The novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro highlights the confinement of the clones from the outside world, which restricts them from greater knowledge about the world past Hailsham. Ishiguro focuses on the theme freedom, confinement, and fate several times in his novel. For the duration of the novel, the clones of Hailsham make no effort to escape as they have learned to accept their fate. They are restricted from this thought because they have subjected to fulfill their purpose, their lack of knowledge about the society past Hailsham world and they are overwhelmed by the idea of the outside world.

The U.S is seen as a safe haven for many refugees and immigrants around the world and that those who have made it are the “lucky ones” however, Author Aimee Phan discusses this common misconception in her novel We Should Never Meet. We Should Never Meet is a collection of short stories about how the Vietnamese War has effected its citizens still living in Vietnam or who fled to the United States in search of a safer home. In one short story, Emancipation, Phan gives readers a look into the life of Mai, a Vietnamese girl who was smuggled to America at the age of five. While the story is told by Mai in first person she is used more as median to show the differences in lives between her four friends Tiffany and Haun,

However, when Clarisse McClellan, an adolescent girl who describes herself using the word “crazy”, crosses his path, Guy is forced to question himself, his relationship with his wife, Mildred, and the society which supports their values. Now that his eyes are open, Guy realizes that he would no longer be content living with his eyes closed. In Never Let me Go, Ishiguro’s protagonist, Kathy H., reminisces on what she considers to have been a joyful childhood while living at Hailsham, before she enters the donation process and prepares herself for certain death. Kathy, like her childhood friends Tommy and Ruth, is a clone whose sole function in society is to donate her organs. The principle of Hailsham, Mrs. Emily, educates the students about art, relationships and humanity, yet the topic of the donations remains a social taboo. In her adult years, Kathy comes to realize that to a society which depends on the donated organs of clones to cure diseases, she is not a human, but a collection of organs. Bradbury and Ishiguro use interactions with other characters to drive their Protagonist to the realization that they are living in a dystopian world. The protagonists in both novels realize the truths of their worlds through interactions with flat characters, round characters, and the

In Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, society considers the students as “less human” (Ishiguro, K. 2006, p. 263) because they are genetically engineered clones. However going by the definition given by Oxford Dictionary’s online the students fit under the category of a human, the human body and complex nature of the mind. According to Genome, cloning is a process genetically producing identical copies of a biological entity which has the same genetic makeup as the original (Cloning. 2004, p. 1), this proves that the students although clones are still humans as the human body is biologically exactly the same as other humans. It is also safe to say that the student have a complex mind as proved by Miss Emily and Madame, the staff at Hailsham, whom set out to prove

Cloning has never been the answer if you have lost somebody or something.There could be problems while the cloning process is happening and the clone could come out wrong. The clone could have something wrong that it could die and kill the person it was cloned after. The people of the world think that a kid

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

Although Ruth’s speech is said out of frustration, it reveals a great deal about what society thinks of, and would do to clones. The degrading term “trash”, could not have come from Ruth’s beliefs alone. The offensive words and actions– whether they originate from Ruth’s own mind or not– must have stemmed from the overall negativity society holds towards clones. This would be an example of the effects of othering, where because of society’s marginalization, assumptions, and biases towards clones, Ruth feels inadequate and reacts aggressively and alienates herself from society; not believing herself to be human (Durhance Hine). Society’s behaviour towards clones have affected the clones, whether it be consciously or unconsciously, their interactions reflect society’s treatment towards them.

Throughout the novel the fear of the unknown stands outs not just to the outside world and their perceptions of clones but also the children growing up at Hailsham The most common criticism that is raised to cloning in general is that it entitles one to start playing God. Throughout the novel, Ishiguro examines many other ways that individuals might play God. This can be seen when Chrissie and Rodney try to change their fate by getting a deferral while in return they are playing God much to the extent the scientists who created them in the first place were. The organ donation program was started in the first place on the idea that the clones owe their lives to society, and should be prepared to sacrifice themselves later in their life. Thus at any given time the clones should be ready for their job which designates them to lose some organ. Madame further emphasizes the life a clone during her meeting with Tommy and Kathy by