All in all, it's just another...

[bibliogramma]

Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

I don’t ordinarily warn about spoilers in these ruminations, but I find that in order to talk about what Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go means to me, I have to discuss and then set aside what it is "about," which means telling you what Ishiguro prefers to let you slowly discover. So my comments are, for once, behind a cut, in case you’d rather read it first for yourself.


Never Let Me Go is the story of three people - Kathy and Tommy and Ruth - with a very particular destiny, one that that the adult Kathy, whose memories we are exploring, tells us involves being first a carer and then "making a donation." In fact, these three characgers, and most of the other characters we meet in this novel, are clones. The story of Kathy and Tommy and Ruth begins with their early childhood in a special school called Hailsham House, which we are given to suspect is unlike most other schools for young clones in some way that is not made clear until much later. Kathy and the other students learn just enough of life to prepare them for their pre-determined futures, and are then sent out into the world to become carers, and then, finally to make their donations.

Kathy and her kind are created to be a source of organs for those who are not clones. All their lives, they are trained to accept this as their fate. Some uncloned people, uncomfortable with all the implications of this, set up schools like Hailsham (which by the time Kathy is well into the first stage of her function as a carer, have all been closed down), where great emphasis was placed on teaching the young clones to express themselves through art – we learn eventually that this was a failed attempt to demonstrate the humanity of the clones to the public by showing that they have human souls because they can create human art.

The clones themselves have created a mythology of sorts, that somewhere there exists a person, or group of people, who can exempt from the necessity of donation those clones who produce particularly great art, or who demonstrate that they are deeply and truly and exceptionally in love – which Kathy and Tommy believe themselves to be.

But of course, there is no way out for the clones. They are created to serve a function, and serve that function they must, no matter how great an artist they might be, or how much love they have to give.

It is easy to say that this book, like many other books about clones, is about the meaning of humanity, of what makes a human being a human being rather than some other, lesser creature. Which then leads us to thinking that this book is about how humans treat people who are seen as not quite human – perhaps because they are of a different race, or class, or because they have a disability (there are times when it seems that Ishiguro's clones are perhaps designed to be not quite as intelligent as the average person, or perhaps it’s just that they are raised not to think too much or look too closely or question too often).

Or the book can be said to be about the future of Western medical treatment – after all, we’re getting closer and closer to Larry Niven’s postulation that someday, the punishment for jay-walking with be force organ donation, what with recent proposals that inmates in US prisons be offered shorter sentences if they agree to become live donors.

And like any really good book, it is of course about these things. But it is also about all of us, I think, who have allowed ourselves to be turned into units in the system, cogs in the wheel, interchangeable parts in the great machines that our (Western) society has become. We think we’re doing something important. We believe that our culture, our art, our love, our humanity, makes us special and different, but in fact, we are all spare parts, to be used as the needs of the society determine, and we have all been taught very carefully not to think too hard about why this is, or look too closely at the system within which we struggle to make a position for ourselves that has some feeling of specialness and of agency to it, or question too often why things are the way they are, and why life can’t be something other than what it is for so many of us. But in the end we are still used, and used up, and sacrificed to the preservation of something else that we have no authentic connection to. And we may weep and think about how nice it would be if we got out of the futures we were destined for – say, if we won the lottery – but so very few of us rage, and rebel, and walk away.


There’s a lot to think about in this novel, and I recommend it to any student of the human condition in modern times.

Comments

[calico-reaction.livejournal.com]

Really like your take on this, especially this paragraph:

And like any really good book, it is of course about these things. But it is also about all of us, I think, who have allowed ourselves to be turned into units in the system, cogs in the wheel, interchangeable parts in the great machines that our (Western) society has become. We think we’re doing something important. We believe that our culture, our art, our love, our humanity, makes us special and different, but in fact, we are all spare parts, to be used as the needs of the society determine, and we have all been taught very carefully not to think too hard about why this is, or look too closely at the system within which we struggle to make a position for ourselves that has some feeling of specialness and of agency to it, or question too often why things are the way they are, and why life can’t be something other than what it is for so many of us. But in the end we are still used, and used up, and sacrificed to the preservation of something else that we have no authentic connection to. And we may weep and think about how nice it would be if we got out of the futures we were destined for – say, if we won the lottery – but so very few of us rage, and rebel, and walk away.


So, so true...

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It was largely your review that moved this book near the top of my "I want to read this" list (now 24 pages long and rising, not to count the 20-odd books I've actually got waiting on my "not-yet-read" shelf, I need to win the lottery so I can just spend my life reading...), so I'm glad you found something of interest in my thoughts on the book.

This was actually the first of his novels I'd read - I think I must go read a few more. I'll probably start with Remains of the Day since I enjoyed the movie so much.

[calico-reaction.livejournal.com]

Glad to be of help! I haven't read any of his other books either, but I've been warned to STAY AWAY from The Unconsoled. My SHU mentor read that and hated it with a fierce passion. He loved Never Let Me Go, though. :)