Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Book Summary Information
Author: Kazuo IshiguroEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-03-14
ISBN: 1400078776
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Never Let Me Go
Book Review: What can happen when we deny humans their humanity
Summary: 4 Stars
While reading it, I found this book a bit unsatisfying because the plot is slow to progress and there are very few changes or major events. However, it stayed with me after I finished it and I found myself liking it better after I had put more thought into it.
Never Let Me Go centers on the lives of three main characters, Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth. Kathy, the narrator, and the other main characters grow up at Hailsham, which initially appears to be some type of boarding school but which we quickly learn is something different. Hailsham is a facility where children who have been created so that their vital organs can be harvested and used by others are housed. We learn that Hailsham is only one of numerous such facilities and that the Hailsham students are comparatively fortunate to live in humane conditions and to be treated kindly by their caregivers. The children are told little by little about their intended purpose, and are told over and over again how special they are. They are told also that they will never have children and will never participate in the careers that other people have. The social justification for using them in this manner seems to be that since they are clones, they don't have souls and therefore there isn't a moral or ethical problem with it. Members of the society who have created the clones are repulsed by the idea of interacting with them firsthand; they are afraid to come face to face with the reality that the clones are in fact human beings. We eventually learn that Hailsham was created as an experiment; an effort on the part of a few socially responsible individuals to show that the clones might possess souls.
As the book progresses, the main characters leave Hailsham and begin living the lives that have been planned for them; for a time they serve as "carers" to the other donors, and then they become donors themselves. The characters are well drawn and realistic. Through them we are able to experience firsthand the suffering and dehumanization inherent in their situation. We also get a better idea of the complexity of their situation and what it might be like to be in that position. It is apparent that these characters are interesting and intelligent people and that they could be active contributors to society. It is also apparent, however, that they know they will never be given the chance. In some ways they have the same loves and desires as all people, and in other ways their ability to form attachments and sustain relationships is stunted by their situation.
During the time that Kathy is narrating the book, she is still a carer but realizes that she will likely be summoned to become a donor at any time. After having lost touch with Ruth and Tommy about ten years before, she reconnects with both of them by becoming Ruth's carer. Soon after that, she sees Ruth die or "complete" as they call it. When Ruth dies it seems that she is very aware of what an unfair and brutal hand she has been dealt, and while Kathy sympathizes with her it doesn't appear that she shares Ruth's feelings. Kathy does experience some grief at losing her friend, but her grief is tempered with blind acceptance of the inevevibility of Ruth's death and is in no way comparable to what the average person experiences when a friend dies. Kathy's place in society has robbed her of the ability to feel that she and her friends have any right to live out full, active lives.
After Ruth's death, Kathy and Tommy begin in earnest the romantic relationship they wish they had had years earlier. They are able to do this via Kathy becoming Tommy's carer. Tommy has already lost three vital organs and expects to be summoned at any time for his fourth and final donation. The pair decide to follow up on a rumor they have heard that two former Hailsham students who are genuinely in love might have an opportunity to have their fate deferred for two years. The two cling to this possibility and decide to pursue it. When they decide they are ready to apply for deferment, they track down a former Hailsham administrator. Predictably, they learn that the deferment was just a rumor and that no such possibilities exist for the likes of them. They do learn more about what Hailsham really was and about the circumstances surrounding their childhoods and their creation. Although contacting Hailsham's former staff members makes them aware that there are non-clones out there who believe that their situation is unjust and morally wrong, this doesn't lead them to explore or even consider the possibility that there is any future for them other than living out the lives which have been prearranged for them.
One might wonder why the main characters don't rebel, but the answer is obvious. They have been programmed from an early age to believe that they are donors and nothing else. Also, the members of broader society have found subtle ways of letting them know there is no way out. Naturally, they don't or can't question the society they live in and their role in it. It is apparent that the donors are not satisfied with their fate, but they cannot question the society that assigned them their role. The only way of changing their circumstances that they can even conceive of is to cling to a pathetic hope that their fate could be "deferred" for two years - if they are found to be sufficiently worthy. There is some real psychological truth to this novel; things don't change very easily once a practice like this has begun and has become ingrained in society.
Ishiguro is exploring some complicated issues in this book, but I don't believe his focus is intended to be on the issues surrounding human cloning. Instead, he is focusing on broader questions, such as the morality of people using other humans as a means to an end, whether or not a human life has inherent value, and whether or not we are accountable for how we treat others even if their lives don't have intrinsic value. He is exploring what can happen when we deny humans their humanity. This author subtly makes the point that we may be confusing certain issues by asking the wrong questions. The people who created these clones justify using them for donor organs by telling themselves the clones don't have souls. But obviously that isn't what matters. The clones' suffering is just as real as anyone else's and it is not moral to put another human being in that position, whether or not that person's life is intrinsically valuable and whether or not that person has a soul.
I realize Ishiguro is not an American author, but some of these issues are particularly relevant to Americans. Not for the obvious reason that cloning and stem cell research are now hot media topics but because the suffering which is caused by unchecked greed and selfishness is the real focus of this novel. Americans are notorious for letting our greed motivate us to treat other humans as a means to an end. For example, a large percentage of the products and foods we purchase on a daily basis cost much less than they should, as the people who worked to create them are not compensated adequately and thus are forced to live in substandard conditions. We treat other humans as a means to an end every day and do not seem interested in stopping this from happening. It is that type of selfishness which is exemplified by the situation of the clones in this novel. It is well known by most members of the society Ishiguro describes that the clones generally spend their childhoods in substandard living conditions and that as adults they undergo a brutal process of having their vital organs taken for use by others. It is also apparent to anyone who chooses to be realistic about the situation that they are just as human as anyone else and entitled to the same rights. But because of human selfishness, a situation that could easily be put to an end is permitted to continue and expand, and at the end of the novel we see no end in sight to this practice.
Summary of Never Let Me Go
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day comes a devastating new novel of innocence, knowledge, and loss. As children Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special?and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together. Suspenseful, moving, beautifully atmospheric, Never Let Me Go is another classic by the author of The Remains of the Day.
All children should believe they are special. But the students of Hailsham, an elite school in the English countryside, are so special that visitors shun them, and only by rumor and the occasional fleeting remark by a teacher do they discover their unconventional origins and strange destiny. Kazuo Ishiguro's sixth novel, Never Let Me Go, is a masterpiece of indirection. Like the students of Hailsham, readers are "told but not told" what is going on and should be allowed to discover the secrets of Hailsham and the truth about these children on their own.
Offsetting the bizarreness of these revelations is the placid, measured voice of the narrator, Kathy H., a 31-year-old Hailsham alumna who, at the close of the 1990s, is consciously ending one phase of her life and beginning another. She is in a reflective mood, and recounts not only her childhood memories, but her quest in adulthood to find out more about Hailsham and the idealistic women who ran it. Although often poignant, Kathy's matter-of-fact narration blunts the sharper emotional effects you might expect in a novel that deals with illness, self-sacrifice, and the severe restriction of personal freedoms. As in Ishiguro's best-known work, The Remains of the Day, only after closing the book do you absorb the magnitude of what his characters endure. --Regina Marler
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