NEVER LET ME GO: Introduction

Another trend in contemporary literature, the intersection of science and humanities, specially
genetic engineering.

-Posthuman, how human species, identity is developing and science has a lot to say about this.

-Concept of cyborg

-How far can we go in experimenting with genes, who will establish/ draw the line between right
and wrong.

-Genetic engineering and cloning: children are bred to provide organs for ordinary people in a
posthuman world.
-Genetic engineering and human relationships (in an undersated manner: words such as clone, gene,
and science are hardly mentioned): Kathy (a carer living in England in the late 1990s)
-Memory as the means to explore humanness in these vulnerable cloned children. Memory makes
us human.

-Ethical concern over the unforeseen results of current advances in the life sciences?

-New ways of understanding human nature (genetic engineering, nanotechnology and robotics) =
posthuman? A new human subjectivity? Katherine Hayles and Francis Fukuyama

19-01-17

Illustrates the issue of science and its role in society. The novel does not deal with scientific issues
in depth, no detailed explanation.

-They are clones, but actually this word is not mention,

→ Using euphemism in a very unestated manner and we have to guess the real meaning, because
he does not mention genetic engineering. Technique to make the reader interested in the topic and if
we had genetic engeneering from the beginning we may have a previous opinion about it so in thay
way he writes it we are exposed in an “innocent” way to create new opinions about it and guess the
real meaning.

English tradition of children moving away from home to spend time in institutions (Enid Blyton
series, Harry potter… ),

They have to prove that they are unique and different but Tommy feel does not fit.

25 → “ But Tommy ignored this. “There's something else,” he went on. “Something else she said I
can't quite figure out. I was going to ask you about it. She said we weren't being taught enough,
something like that.”

“Taught enough? You mean she thinks we should be studying even harder than we are?”

“No, I don't think she meant that. What she was talking about was, you know, about us. What's
going to happen to us one day. Donations and all that.”
The author does only give hints about what is going on, an their future etc.

–
No matter how guided and directed you are, there is always one person that does not follow the
conventions and the rules, against the corrent, who question things, and that is perhaps that makes
us human.

And this poses a question → What is it that makes us human?

The novel does not answer the question, because it is a hot topic nowadays and to make us think.
Ambiguous thing

Page 26

“It's for the Gallery.”

“But what is her gallery? She keeps coming here and taking away our best work. She must have
stacks of it by now. I asked Miss Geraldine once how long Madame's been coming here, and she
said for as long as Hailsham's been here. What is this gallery? Why should she have a gallery of
things done by us?”

“Maybe she sells them. Outside, out there, they sell everything.” I shook my head. “That can't be it.
It's got something to do with what Miss Lucy said to you. About us, about how one day we'll start
giving donations. Idon't know why, but I've had this feeling for some time now, that it's all linked in,
though I can't figure out how. I'll have to go now, Tommy. Let's not tell anyone yet, about what
we've been saying.”

→ → Kathy & Ruth & Tommy begin to question things

14

“His size and strength–and I suppose that temper–meant no one tried actual physical bullying, but
from what I remember, for a couple of months at least, these incidents kept coming. I thought
sooner or later someone would start saying it had gone too far, but it just kept on, and no one said
anything. “

Recognizable aspects of children.

––
Intertextual echoes

Halisham → Miss Havisham (Great Expectations) she raised Estella up in order to take revenge for
her, revenge towards men. Through her she took her revenge, manipulated to break men’s hearts.

Frankenstein myth / Paralellism with Never let me go. Dr. Frankensein creates live from death.
Paralellism with Miss Havisham / Estella (being the created monster).
–
Due to the powerful 1st person voice we tend to believe what Kathy says.

-care: implies generosity, due to protect the other,

-Clones that are also carer

Uncanny (stranger) uncanny close, the same but very different, a stranger, THE OTHER, but in this
novel it is not THE OTHER, they are like myself (the clones). We do not identify with the original,
we identify with the clones and make “the other” the humans.
––

link between page 4 and page 17

p4 → reference to feelings. A clone is considering that carers are not machines. Kathy keeps a
dialogue with the reader

“And why shouldn't they? Carers aren't machines. You try and do your best for every donor, but in
the end, it wears you down. You don't have unlimited patience and energy. So when you get a
chance to choose, of course, you choose your own kind. That's natural. There's no way I could have
gone on for as long as I have if I'd stopped feeling for my donors every step of the way.”

Page 17
Memory → important part of the novel, how the whole novel is constructed upon memories, maybe
memories are what makes them human and what draws human and clones closer.

“I want to move on now to our last years at Hailsham. I'm talking about the period from when we
were thirteen to when we left at sixteen. In my memory my life at Hailsham falls into two distinct
chunks: this last era, and everything that came before. The earlier years–the ones I've just been
telling you about–they tend to blur into each other as a kind of golden time, and when I think about
them at all, even the not-so-great things, I can't help feeling a sort of glow. But those last years feel
different. They weren't unhappy exactly–I've got plenty of memories I treasure from them–but they
were more serious, and in some ways darker. Maybe I've exaggerated it in my mind, but I've got an
impression of things changing rapidly around then, like day moving into night.”

The way she talks an easy English, in first person, and addressing the reader as “you” that draws us
closer to Kathy. Who is this YOU? If they had to be creative to prove they have a soul, she has
written a survival narrative, kind of autobiographical memoir for a potencial reader and show that
clones have soul after all and to prove they are human.

They feel, they produce art… like a warning of genetic manipulation and its ethic responsibilities of
all the choices they took (As well as in Atonement).

What is supposed to be “the other” “the strangers” are the clones but we identify with them, and we
seem to be siding the clones (estar de parte de ellos).

If we want to defeat time, death and decay, remain in posterity we should be writing fiction and
creating art, that is in fact what Kathy does. In fact Kathy demostrates she has a soul and that her
soul is encapsulated in the text itself, we are moved because her soul is portrayed through language
and art and we resurrect her life by reading it.

Kazuo Ishiguro is not interest in the technical aspects of science but to say something about science
from the perspective of art and ethics but also to discuss the future of science, posthuman era.
Raising question: can we regard them as human? If they are not human… what do they lack to be
humans?

Science brings light but they are kept in the dark and those more perceptive know the truth. Like
children they remain in the dark, innocent, and when they know all of a sudden they gain
experience and they are no longer innocent. Do they take any active action?
They haven’t been exposed to the real world or “the other” world. Why they do not rebel? Maybe
they are happy in their innocence and they were brought that way but it goes against they reader
expectations, in which we usually find rebellious characters against something and overcome
problems but here they do nothing, they don’t fight against their destiny.

Allegory of contemporary times: how we are as group, treated as cattle, we are brought up as a
group, criticism to society that does not rebel to injustice.

“A good example is what happened the time Tommy got the gash on his elbow. It must have been
just before my talk with him by the pond; a time, I suppose, when Tommy was still coming out of
that phase of being teased and taunted.

It wasn't such a bad gash, and though he was sent to Crow Face to have it seen to, he was back
almost straight away with a square of dressing plastered to his elbow. No one thought much about it
until a couple of days later, when Tommy took off the dressing to reveal something at just that stage
between sealing and still being an open wound. You could see bits of skin starting to bond, and soft
red bits peeping up from underneath. We were in the middle of lunch, so everyone crowded round
to go “urgh!” Then Christopher H., from the year above, said with a dead straight face: “Pity it's on
that bit of the elbow. Just about anywhere else, it wouldn't matter.”

Tommy looked worried–Christopher being someone he looked up to in those days–and asked what
he meant. Christopher went on eating, then said nonchalantly: “Don't you know? If it's right on the
elbow like that, it can unzip. All you have to do is bend your arm quickly. Not just that actual bit,
the whole elbow, it can all unzip like a bag opening up. Thought you'd know that.”

Cryptic message embedded in this statement: the innocent and the knowing ones. Christopher
means that it’s a pity that the elbow would not serve to be cut in pieces.

“But the reason the tape meant so much to me had nothing to do with the cigarette, or even with the
way Judy Bridgewater sang–she's one of those singers from her time, cocktail-bar stuff, not the sort
of thing any of us at Hailsham liked. What made the tape so special for me was this one particular
song: track number three, “Never Let Me Go.”

What was so special about this song? Well, the thing was, I didn't used to listen properly to the
words; I just waited for that bit that went: “Baby, baby, never let me go...” And what I'd imagine
was a woman who'd been told she couldn't have babies, who'd really, really wanted them all her life.
Then there's a sort of miracle and she has a baby, and she holds this baby very close to her and
walks around singing: “Baby, never let me go...” partly because she's so happy, but also because
she's so afraid something will happen, that the baby will get ill or be taken away from her. Even at
the time, I realised this couldn't be right, that this interpretation didn't fit with the rest of the lyrics.
But that wasn't an issue with me. The song was about what I said, and I used to listen to it again and
again, on my own, whenever I got the chance.

[…]

Maybe the volume had been turned right up by whoever had been using it last, I don't know. But it
was much louder than I usually had it and that was probably why I didn't hear her before I did. Or
maybe I'd just got complacent by then. Anyway, what I was doing was swaying about slowly in
time to the song, holding an imaginary baby to my breast. In fact, to make it all the more
embarrassing, it was one of those times I'd grabbed a pillow to stand in for the baby, and I was
doing this slow dance, my eyes closed, singing along softly each time those lines came around
again:

“Oh baby, baby, never let me go...”

The song was almost over when something made me realise I wasn't alone, and I opened my eyes to
find myself staring at Madame framed in thedoorway.

I froze in shock.

She has imagination, gives her own interpretation of this song, she’s providing meaning to an object
that for her it represents a baby, a pillow is like a baby (metaphor), only humans can do that.
Projecting that meaning into an object. She has the need of establishing a link with another being,
kind of maternal, protective instinct, because they can not reproduce themselves.

It is more than creating creative works, this goes one step towards humanity. They see, interpret life.

As clones, do not live in isolation, they live in company.

The whole novel is raising questions about many themes but it is not teaching now answer any
question, there is no moral instruction, just to warning us agains a possible future.

Sense of identity: The clones are always together, not as individuals but always together. Being part
of the group is more important than individuals, a criticism to society of nowadays, like cattle.

Depiction of clones with sense of group contrasted with human beings that are nos part of any
group, are isolated and only care about their own things.

Simplicity (technique) VS Complexity (guess) → The novel looks simple but it reveal very
complex issues in the surface of simplicity (simple= plot, easy English…) simplicity leads to
complexity, and complex issues in relation with humanity and closes, such ethical investment,
genetic engineering, responsibilities for our acts.

The novel emphasizes conectiveness as humans are social beings, humans and clones need each
other, even though we make copies of ourselves they have the need to belong to a group and need
each other.

Emulate adult behaviour by having sex (They can not reproduce)

“As you'd expect, sex was different at the Cottages from how it had been at Hailsham. It was a lot
more straightforward–more “grown up.” You didn't go around gossiping and giggling about who'd
been doing it with whom. If you knew two students had had sex, you didn't immediately start
speculating about whether they'd become a proper couple

The atmosphere, like I say, was much more grown up. But when I look back,the sex at the Cottages
seems a bit functional. Maybe it was precisely because all the gossip and secrecy had gone. Or
maybe it was because of the cold.”

– They feel they are functional because it was repetitive, functional

“When I remember sex at the Cottages, I think about doing it in freezing rooms in the pitch dark,
usually under a ton of blankets. And the blankets often weren't even blankets, but a really odd
assortment–old curtains, even bits of carpet. Sometimes it got so cold you just had to pile anything
you could over you, and if you were having sex at the bottom of it, it felt like a mountain of bedding
was pounding at you, so that half the time you weren't sure if you were doing it with the boy or all
that stuff.”

Not noticing if you were having sex wih a boy or the things in the room. Plain description of sex, its
just the way they’ve been made to emphasize the depriving of feelings, it is the way of turn them as
less human in this description of having sex, they seem to be objectified → sameness, the bed and
the boy, because they feel nothing.

–
They go on a trip to Norfolk, chapter 12 (one saw the original so wanted to go there, to search for
the truth and to look for the diferal idea). No matter if you are human being or clone, you need
hope, if you give up hope and became being pessimistic you begin to end your life.

PART 3: chapter 18

Kathy behaves in a human-like manner

“For the most part being a carer's suited me fine. You could even say it's brought the best out of me.
But some people just aren't cut out for it, and for them the whole thing becomes a real struggle.
They might start off positively enough, but then comes all that time spent so close to the pain and
the worry. And sooner or later a donor doesn't make it, even though, say, it's only the second
donation and no one anticipated complications. When a donor completes like that, out of the blue, it
doesn't make much difference what the nurses say to you afterwards, and neither does that letter
saying how they're sure you did all you could and to keep up the good work. For a while at least,
you're demoralised.

-We feel empathy, we feel that we had that experience before, you do your best and you don’t
success, this is shared by the humans and the clones, this sense of frustration

“I don't claim I've been immune to all of this, but I've learnt to live with it. Some carers, though,
their whole attitude lets them down

“Even the solitude, I've actually grown to quite like. That's not to say I'm not looking forward to a
bit more companionship come the end of the year when I'm finished with all of this. But I do like
the feeling of getting into my little car, knowing for the next couple of hours I'll have only the roads,
the big grey sky and my daydreams for company. And if I'm in a town somewhere with several
minutes to kill, I'll enjoy myself wandering about looking in the shop windows. Here in my bedsit,
I've got these four desk-lamps, each a different colour, but all the same design–they have these
ribbed necks you can bend whichever way you want”

-Solitude of Kathy, she dreams, write about her experience, walks around as she was a human
being, she feel herself accompanied with the past. She doesn’t feel the solitude, she copes with the
pain because she has a past and memories, memories keeps her alive and hopeful.
Chapter 21-22: Explain how they were made…

For a moment they were both looking at me. Then Madame said, barely
audibly:
“Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?” She let that hang, and I
thought I could see tears in her eyes again. Then she turned to me and asked: “Do we continue with
this talk? You wish to go on?”

Dehumanizing them, not humans but creatures. You wish to know the truth? This search of the truth
bring them together. Does the truth exist? It depends on the point of view, the clones have their own
point of view but Madame ad Mary Claude will tell their own true.

The real plot is hidden and in the final the tuth will be out because the genetic manipulation has
been hidden and we have to interpret it and in this moment it is revealed.

“Yes, why Hailsham at all? Marie-Claude likes to ask that a lot these days. But not so long ago,
before the Morningdale scandal, she wouldn't have dreamt of asking a question like that. It wouldn't
have entered her head. You know that's right, don't look at me like that! There was only one person
in those days who would ask a question like that, and that was me. Long before Morningdale, right
from the very beginning, I asked that. And that made iteasy for the rest of them, Marie-Claude, all
the rest of them, they could all carry on without a care. All you students too. I did all the worrying
and questioning for the lot of you. And as long as I was steadfast, then no doubts ever crossed your
minds, any of you. But you asked your questions, dear boy. Let's answer the simplest one, and
perhaps it will answer all the rest. Why did we take your artwork? Why did we do that? You said an
interesting thing earlier, Tommy. When you were discussing this with Marie-Claude. You said it was
because your art would reveal what you were like. What you were like inside. That's what you said,
wasn't it? Well, you weren't far wrong about that. We took away your art because we thought it
would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.”

– Like children asking for the truth, explanations, and as the children are grown up enough and they
had have experiences, they deserve to know the truth

She paused, and Tommy and I exchanged glances for the first time in ages. Then I asked: “Why
did you have to prove a thing like that, Miss Emily? Did someone think we didn't have souls?”

They were not considering they were not human, they feel as human, they can’t realize and they
have kept a little bit of innocence, purity, they are ignorant because ignorance is due to their own
innocence, and they (Madame etc.) will provide the knowledge.

What is so moving is that naivety, he feels as human as the others.

A thin smile appeared on her face. “It's touching, Kathy, to see you so taken aback. It demonstrates,
in a way, that we did our job well → Make you feel special and as the others

“Then a few years later came the SaundersTrust. Together, we became a small but very vocal movement, and we
challenged the entire way the donations programme was being run. Most importantly, we demonstrated to the
world that if students were reared in humane, cultivated environments, it was possible for them to grow to be as
sensitive and intelligent as any ordinary human being. Before that, all clones–or students, as we preferred to call
you–existed only to supply medical science. In the early days, after the war, that's largely all you were to most
people. Shadowy objects in test tubes. Wouldn't you agree, Marie-Claude? She's being very quiet. Usually you
can't get her to shut up on this subject. Your presence, my dears, appears to have tied her tongue. Very well. So to
answer your question, Tommy. That was why we collected your art. We selected the best of it and put on special
exhibitions. In the late seventies, at the height of our influence, we were organising large events all around the
country. There'd be cabinet ministers, bishops, all sorts of famous people coming to attend.”
…

“From your perspective today, Kathy, your bemusement is perfectly reasonable. But you must try and see it
historically. After the war, in the early fifties, when the great breakthroughs in science followed one after the
other so rapidly, there wasn't time to take stock, to ask the sensible questions. Suddenly there were all these
new possibilities laid before us, all these ways to cure so many previously incurable conditions. […]
However uncomfortable people were about your existence, their overwhelming concern was that their own
children, their spouses, their parents, their friends, did not die from cancer, motor neurone disease, heart
disease. So for a long time you were kept in the shadows, and people did their best not to think about you.
And if they did, they tried to convince themselves you weren't really like us. That you were less than human,
so it didn't matter.

We relate to this, everybody would want to save their family and friends…

“Well, I suppose there's no reason why you should. It was never such a large matter in the wider world. It
concerned a scientist called James Morningdale, quite talented in his way. He carried on his work in a remote
part of Scotland, where I suppose he thought he'd attract less attention. What he wanted was to offer people
the possibility of having children with enhanced characteristics. Superior intelligence, superior athleticism,
that sort of thing. Of course, there'd been others with similar ambitions, but this Morningdale fellow, he'd
taken his research much further than anyone before him, far beyond legal boundaries. Well, he was
discovered, they put an end to his work and that seemed to be that. Except, of course, it wasn't, not for us. As
I say, it never became an enormous matter. But it did create a certain atmosphere, you see. It reminded
people, reminded them of a fear they'd always had. It's one thing to create students, such as yourselves, for
the donation programme. But a generation of created children who'd take their place in society? Children
demonstrably superior to the rest of us? Oh no. That frightened people. They recoiled from that.”

-Like Frankenstein’s monster. The narrative moves on from curing deseases to enhancing
characeristics, put together, not posing questions but we can imagine them.

-Natural selection (nature is wise) VS Artificial selection (genetic being improved)

-If there are superior beings why do we exist? Artificial selection will be better than natural
selection and human fear them to take their place.

“I can see,” Miss Emily said, “that it might look as though you were simply pawns in a game. It can
certainly be looked at like that. But think of it. You were lucky pawns. There was a certain climate
and now it's gone. You have to accept that sometimes that's how things happen in this world.
People's opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other. It just so happens you grew up at a
certain point in this process.”

She says that Kathy has to be submissive and she has to accept it, and we expect her to be against it
as part of fiction but it looks just like real world, a memoir.

“I was talking to one of my donors a few days ago who was complaining about how memories,
even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don't go along with that. The
memories I value most, I don't see them ever fading. I lost Ruth, then I lost Tommy, but I won't lose
my memories of them.

I suppose I lost Hailsham too. You still hear stories about some ex-Hailsham student trying to find
it, or rather the place where it used to be. And the odd rumour will go round sometimes about what
Hailsham's become these days–a hotel, a school, a ruin. Myself, for all the driving I do, I've never
tried to find it. I'm not really interested in seeing it, whatever way it is now.
-Bearer of memories, as a representative of this generation of students, she will pass her memories
to whoever the audience might be, because memories make her identity and keept her alive but also
her memories keep her past and friends alive. And through this memoir they all will be alive.

- “Lost”: what doesi t evoke? Nosalgia, sense of loss, longing for the return and it for happen again,
because Halisham represents all her world. They have to look to the past because if they look to the
future, there’s only death.

-She doesn’t need to look at the place it was o what it looks like now, because she has her memories

“Mind you, though I say I never go looking for Hailsham, what I find is that sometimes, when I'm driving
around, I suddenly think I've spotted some bit of it. I see a sports pavilion in the distance and I'm sure it's
ours. Or a row of poplars on the horizon next to a big woolly oak, and I'm convinced for a second I'm coming
up to the South Playing Field from the other side. Once, on a grey morning, on a long stretch of road in
Gloucestershire, I passed a broken-down car in a lay-by, and I was sure the girl standing in front of it, gazing
emptily out towards the on-coming vehicles, was Susanna C., who'd been a couple of years above us and one
of the Sales monitors. These moments hit me when I'm least expecting it, when I'm driving with something
else entirely in my mind. So maybe at some level, I am on the lookout for Hailsham.

But as I say, I don't go searching for it, and anyway, by the end of the year, I won't be driving
around like this any more. So the chances are I won't ever come across it now, and on reflection, I'm
glad that's the way it'll be. It's like with my memories of Tommy and of Ruth. Once I'm able to have
a quieter life, in whichever centre they send me to, I'll have Hailsham with me, safely in my head,
and that'll be something no one can take away.

The only indulgent thing I did, just once, was a couple of weeks after I heard Tommy had
completed, when I drove up to Norfolk, even though I had no real need to.

END

“I was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic in the branches, the shore-line of odd stuff
caught along the fencing, and I half-closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where
everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of
it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and
gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, maybe even call. The fantasy never
got beyond that–I didn't let it–and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn't sobbing or out of
control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was
supposed to be.”

Pesimistic?

-It is kind of hopeful, in memory is hope, and she completes her donations knowing the truth and in
the other hand her memories are important for her and through writing she has fulfilled a particular
aim, to leave it as a testimony for the readers or other clones to come. She’s not depressed, she’s
moving on, she’s prepared to be a donor.

-Past, present and future are important in this novel. Past shapes us and is important to live their
present but it poses questions to the future and also the novel is written in a memoir way to read in
the future and learn about the past.

Memories
Story-telling
Taking responsibilites
Hope

(Like Atonement)