Book Club: "A book about what it is to be human how far do you agree with this statement?"
Mortality is an important feature of human life, everything must come to an end. Like humans, clones are born to die however their lives are already set out for them. They cannot stray from this path, mainly because they have no parents to teach them to stand up for themselves. This links to the books idea of mortality because unlike humans they are expendable (adjective, not worth keeping or preserving: suitable for sacrificing to gain an objects) this describes the clones perfectly because although they are needed for their organs. They are not worth preserving and people are very happy to sacrifice them for their organs. Right at the end it is revealed that when they ‘complete’ they don't die but they are plugged into live support and are milked until they are no longer useful where most likely they are destroyed of not in a ritualistic way like how humans have funerals. This idea of them caring and then donating is very sinister because they essentially help others to their doom. Their friends even, they have always known that they are bred to be harvested for their organs in some way (even if it is very subtle ‘you Hailsham kids are … special’) like the way Miss Lucy spoke about how she used to smoke, excluding them from the ‘we’ element. She say it is more important to keep yourselves healthy than it is for someone like me, that is where this idea of excluding them from society is introduced. It is very human to want to be part of something, a community, and being excluded normally isn't a nice thing. But the students however do not pick up on this sense of the guardians distancing themselves until their encounter with Madame. This although it may not have seemed like that, was when they crossed the line form being children to realising they have to grow up and some people don’t agree with the way they have come into being and the morals behind why.
The fact that Tommy isn’t creative, in a way makes it easier to take his organs and harvest him slowly, because for humans, individuality is often expressed through art and creativity. The fact that Tommy lacks this individuality makes him more of a clone and less like a human, distancing him from the others because they can express themselves through their art, drawing them closer to being human. This is why Tommy was bullied because deep down they knew that the art that was taken was used to demonstrate something which was important so if you couldn't get anything in then you lack the ‘something special’ that makes you Hailsham student, the almost human clones. Throughout this book the word soul is used to symbolise what it is to be human, the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, but the thing is they are technically not human they don't have ‘all the bits’ which make us biologically human. But if you think of us as defined by our personality rather than our roots, then they could pass.
The narration in the book gives it this eerie sense of something sinister, the way Kathy phrases things like ‘did a laugh’ it is probably what we sound like to a Spaniard if we try to speak Spanish. Not quite right but still vaguely understandable. We followed Kathy throughout her life, from childhood to when she lost all of her childhood friends, her way of speaking wasn’t very noticeable, but after we read it and it was pointed out it came out to the foreground and skewed our understanding of the story. On second reading everything that seems innocent, like their childhood, had an off sense to them. The author makes us see how a world like this has it positives (cures) but it makes us see it from the side of these lab rats and puts us in a moral dilemma.
The morality of this program is constantly questioned it is mainly Miss Lucy who questions this because she is newer to the program and still feels bad about giving them this lovely education and hope for a good life and then just letting them get their organs removed. Miss Lucy almost feels guilty for putting them through this and not allowing them to pursue their dreams. From the point of view of other facilities like Hailsham, the student must have seemed lucky. But from an onlookers view point the Hailsham student may even see more unlucky than the others. The students were all thinking of dream jobs and doing things with their lives and getting their hopes up for the future. The students were raised in a nurturing environment which allows them to develop as humans, but what’s the point? If they are just going to be harvested why bother giving them a nice couple of years, this is probably why the system was shut down, it was unnecessary.
What the clones do not have is a family, the closest thing they have to that is the guardians which still aren't allowed to have a personal relationship with the students (not that they have many personal things). The Sales are an example of what their families may have given them as gifts and this is symbolic because they treasure theses things like we would treasure our family, they keep a collection which is the only way they can independently build character. Norfolk is a place that they believe lost things go, they believe that they may find their family in Norfolk because it is something they don’t have or may have just lost (what they hope), Norfolk is dream to them, they went there because Rodney though he saw Ruth's possible, the closest thing to biological parents they have. Norfolk is their lost corner so they wish that they could see the things that are lost, like at the end Kathy drives out to Norfolk to look for Tommy, this ties everything together because when Tommy bought her the tape which she lost it probably reinforced the idea of Norfolk being a place where treasured possessions show up, that tape meant a lot to Kathy and Tommy finding it for her in Norfolk made Norfolk a special place, so when she goes looking for Tommy the best place to go is Norfolk because of how much it meant to Kathy.
As we follow Kathy through her life we empathise with the clones because she doesn’t particularly seem odd and at first we do not notice a difference, it’s a very familiar story, a girl going through life, people are bullied and teased just like in a regular school. These are all things that make us human the clones have everything on paper that defines a human, they seem human until you dig deep into the way they were created and what they are used for. This story lacks morals because if you knew what was right or wrong then people would stop it, like they eventually did. The art and creativity aspect of this book is important because the way they are brought up to be as similar to humans as possible, they need a way to prove that they aren't just clones. If people want only to create them for their organs and bring them into this world only to be stripped of what keeps the alive then they have to be ok with knowing that they are more human than just their organs.
