Book Club: “A book about what it is to be human” How far do you agree with this statement?
In Mr Bingham’s Year 10 class the pupils have been studying “Never Let Me Go,” by Kazuo Ishiguro. Published in 2004, the prize-winning novel depicts a strange dystopia where the difference between clones and human is often hard to tell. The class enjoyed the novel and would very much recommend it. Enjoy!
For humans, art is often expressed by an individual as a show of affection, sadness, love or pain. The arts are a large part of our lives but, in Never Let Me Go, art and creativity are an even larger part of Hailsham and the clones’ way of life. The arts are beautiful and can move and transport people to completely different places, they can make people cry and laugh and dream and think and question through expression. However, the way Kathy talks about art and creativity at Hailsham, she sounds almost detached as though it was something that the Guardians forced them to do and they just got on with it. This is disturbing to the reader as they are used to art and painting and poetry as being something that people are very passionate about. This raises the question to the reader during the first reading of ‘Are these children normal? Are they human?’ During the first reading, the reader simply sees Hailsham as a normal school for normal children, being taught ordinary lessons but, in the second reading, the reader knows about the Gallery and that the children are clones. They understand that art is important to the Guardians and Madame because they want to prove that the children have souls. The idea of souls, I think, is really a metaphor for individuality, they are what makes me, me and what makes you, you. Madame was trying, with the Gallery, to prove that the clones had souls and could express and feel emotion through art, yes, but also that they were individuals, all of them. Even though they are clones of people who already existed and were fully developed before they were even made, they are human and should be recognised not as ‘medical supplies’ but as individual people that deserve as much of a chance at life as humans do. However, this idea of Madame campaigning for the clones’ rights causes controversy when she appears to be afraid of the clones as one might ‘have a fear of spiders’. This shows that even someone as involved and dedicated to the clones as Madame still knows, deep down, that there is something unsettling about them and that something is wrong or rather something is missing from them. The way she acts around them, clutching her bag to her chest and cringing away from them shows that it isn’t something she can control and is something that she subconsciously knows. I think that her fear comes from knowing what they are and how they were scientifically ‘grown’ but mainly that she has spent a good chunk of her life studying and presenting their art. I think that she has seen almost through their art as a window to the soul and has seen that something is wrong with these children. Their art has revealed to her what each child or rather clone is like and there is something unsettling about what she has seen. Ishiguro uses the art and creativity in Never Let Me Go to get the reader to question what really makes someone human and who has the right to decide what is human and what is not and how to treat those that aren’t human.
The clones do not have a family. They have lived and grown up in Hailsham, we assume, all of their lives before they leave for the Cottages and there the closest thing to a parent they have is a Guardian. The Guardians do present parental figures but they have to be parents to all of the Hailsham students so none of them get the joy or the privilege of having a parent or even two all to themselves with no one else to concentrate on. I think that the fact that the clones did not have parents is important because it means that they have grown up without a moral compass. Many of us don’t realise how much we get from our parents; I mean they drive us places and cook our food but we also learn how to behave in certain social situations, how to deal with stress and anxiety and we even sometimes copy their views as our own. For us, parents are a huge part of our childhood and upbringing and they really help us to define who we are. The clones get none of this and sort of have to muddle their way through their lives with a few tips and pointers from the Guardians but mostly they are on their own. This is why Tommy lost his temper so frequently and in such a dramatic way. He did not know why or how he should keep his cool and act when the other children riled him and, where we would normally have a parent to tell us to stop being so immature, he had no one. Kathy H. was the closest he had to a maternal figure who got him to calm down and talked through his feelings with him. I also, think that Miss Lucy played a large part Tommy’s childhood and often had private very ‘confusing’ chats about his life and his problems with art and creativity. As a way to cope with, for them, the unknown loss of parents, the children developed the idea that Norfolk was a ‘lost corner’ after Miss Emily called it that in her lecture. They created the idea that all of the things they have ever lost will be found in Norfolk as though it was almost the lost and found box of England. This idea seems bizarre to the reader and kind of a joke but the clones take it a lot more seriously. During their time at the Cottages, Ruth, Tommy, Kathy, Chrissie and Rodney all take a trip to Norfolk to find Ruth’s ‘original’. This is a euphemism for parent as it refers to the person they were cloned from. Ruth is very anxious about finding her original and it takes over the entirety of the trip. It is almost as if, because Norfolk is the lost corner, she will find her lost parent and they will be the family she never had. However, Kathy also finds a copy of her beloved tape, Songs After Dark, and although it is not the same copy, she feels that it has been sitting there in Norfolk for all of these years waiting for her. As well as this, at the end of the book, Kathy is driving through Norfolk after she has lost Tommy and before that, Ruth, and when she gets out, she sees all of this ‘strange rubbish’ pinned up against the fence. She interprets it as though all of the rubbish has been on a massive journey and each bit has come from somewhere different and travelled along way before finally coming against the fence and stopping. This refers to Kathy’s life. She has travelled a long way as a person from the little girl that danced and cradled a pillow to an adult woman that has lost her best friend and her lover and her childhood and had finally come against that fence with nothing left. ‘Strange’ is an odd word to describe rubbish as rubbish is the litter of everyday things; in fact it is one of the most ordinary things there is. We see it everywhere and yet here it is described as strange like it has been changed on its journey and has suddenly become extraordinary. Again, I feel that this refers to Kathy because she started off as a clone of some other person and now she has developed into her own person and ended up in the ‘lost corner’ of Britain, a changed but lost person with no purpose or direction. She is no longer so-and-so’s clone but she is now Kathy H., her own person if not quite human. Ishiguro uses the idea of the clones having no family to get the reader to question what family means and how important having those who love and support you is and does a family make someone human.
The clones are born to die. They, like humans, have no other purpose on this earth other than to die. Death is imminent and will find everyone and everything in the end. However, humans have another purpose; to reproduce and do their bit to keep the race alive and blossoming for as long as possible. Clones are made sterile so they cannot reproduce and therefore have nothing to do other than to wait to die. They are harvested for their organs so I suppose you could say that they have done their bit to keep the race alive as long as possible but instead of bringing life, they help with death. Fear of mortality motivates the clones. They fear completion (death) just as we humans do and are prepared to do anything it takes to live for just a few more years. The fear of death actually drives Tommy and Kathy far enough to seek out Madame and ask for a deferral. Humans fear death just as much because it is so unknown and is a complete mystery. No one knows what happens after death; people can only guess. In humans, the survival instinct is the most powerful feeling there is, it can make someone do extraordinary things and can push the limits on humanity to breaking point. However, unlike humans, the clones are killed very young by a very inhumane death which basically takes out each of their useful organs one by one, bit by bit and then, once all of the use has come from their bodies, the remains are tossed in a sack and chucked away. No human would ever kill another human so relentlessly and the clones don’t even get the mercy of death. They are constantly living in fear that the mysterious ‘completion’ won’t even mean death. They are afraid that after they have officially completed, the ‘whitecoats’ will keep them not quite alive but somehow conscious while they remove all other organs and parts of the body. Kathy describes it as ‘horror movie stuff’ which it is. It is extremely cruel and gruesome and incredibly inhumane. It has been shown by Madame and proved by Hailsham that these clones are at least part human even if they are not fully human and why, just because they were made differently, should they be forced to live such cruel lives and have them ended in such a horrible way? Ishiguro uses the idea of mortality to get the reader thinking about death and what happens after death but also about our own fear of death and how it changes us and makes us behave in different ways.
Overall I strongly agree with this statement because I think that Ishiguro uses the three main themes of the book; mortality, family and art and creativity to probe the reader into thinking about our society and about how we treat other people. Ishiguro makes the reader think about how they would treat the clones if they were in the same kind of world and what makes a human, human. The book raises so many more questions than it answers so its purpose seems to be not to tell the reader that this is right and this is wrong but to help the reader make up his/her own mind on what humanity is and what it is to be human.
