Never Let Me Go Chapter 1

This book has an introduction, a total of 20 chapters, and a conclusion. King organizes her book by expressing how her daughter, Josie, passed away at age four due to a hospital error. She then gives contextual information about the family in the following chapter, leading up to when Josie was first taken to the hospital, and how Josie’s passing enabled King to revolutionize the healthcare industry regarding patient care. King narrates the novel in first person, and reveals her experience in a chronological order.

Instead, Ishiguro introduced the readers to the creation’s point of view. The novel portrayed them as beings with complex humanness rather than mindless monsters, preventing them from being reduced to simple antagonist. The trio - Kathy, Ruth and Tommy - are students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school for cloned children whom were born and raised solely for the purpose of organ donations. Never Let Me Go whisks the reader into an alternative world of 1990’s England and into the lives of these children, a world filled with much light yet as much darkness. What hides behind this boarding school was deceit and manipulation. While there was art and literature classes, all education was geared towards conditioning the students to fulfill their predetermined responsibility - the sole task of organ donation. The children have no concrete knowledge outside the walls of Hailsham as they were sheltered from the brutal reality of their fate. However at the same time, sheltered from the alienation and fear of their existence. To the outside world, they were nothing more than a disposable vessel carrying replacement organs. Thus, frightening to those who didn’t hold the same fate. But, also not “human enough” to deserve human rights. This results to the perplexity of the trio as they are torn between the identity they established themselves and the identity the world defines them as. Yet no one attempted to question or escape this parasitism relationship. Or is it simply because one acclimates to their environment? But perhaps no amount of pondering or pursuit of another dream could ever change the inevitable outcome. After all, it is society that ultimately decides their fate: creation of life and loss of life. Even the children maintain this

When we think of childhood we think of blissful, exhilarating moments, like being pushed on a swing higher and higher feeling as if you could stretch your hand and grasp the clouds, as you experience the cooling air of a hot summer day on your blushed face, as you yelped to be pushed further into the clouds. We do not think of the anguish and questions that the sight of death brings. But that’s exactly what happens to six year old Antonio Marez in the novel Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya. When young Antonio witnesses the death of a local War Veteran, a family friend, and a classmate, it leaves him with transforming effects, prompting him to question death, sin, morality, and in the end leading him to be ambivalent towards his Catholic beliefs. Through every mortifying act that he witnesses, he has the guidance of Ultima, an elderly “curandera,” healer, who uses her wisdom to lead Antonio to answer his own questions.

Imagine having everything you wished for. You would live in a perfect world. But every world has imperfections and you come across to realizing...a perfect world doesn’t exist. Within time, you come from an illusion to reality. You choose your journey and it starts here. The community is a separate environment from the world and has many rules to live by. The rules can vary to be severe consequences. It includes sameness, no memories, and family unit regulations. The kids end their childhood at the age of 12 by receiving their life assignment. The main character, Jonas is chosen to be the receiver of memory. He is reliable to hold everyone's feelings, hopes, and devotions. In The Giver the author Lois Lowry uses the theme of change to reveal that growing up in “the community” is a non-stressful and organized environment but Jonas finds the real world a whole different place when he receives memories about strong feelings and hardships, intellects the word “love”, and how important it is to be an individual.

he AIDS hospice reeked from disease and neglect. On my first day there, after an hour of "training," I met Paul, a tall, emaciated, forty-year-old AIDS victim who was recovering from a stroke that had severely affected his speech. I took him to General Hospital for a long-overdue appointment. It had been weeks since he had been outside. After waiting for two and a half hours, he was called in and then needed to wait another two hours for his prescription. Hungry, I suggested we go and get some lunch. At first Paul resisted; he didn’t want to accept the lunch offer. Estranged from his family and seemingly ignored by his friends, he wasn’t used to anyone being kind to him — even though I was only talking about a Big Mac. When it arrived, Paul took his first bite. Suddenly, his face lit up with the biggest, most radiant smile. He was on top of the world because somebody bought him a hamburger. Amazing. So little bought so much. While elated that I had literally made Paul’s day, the neglect and emotional isolation from which he suffered disgusted me. This was a harsh side of medicine I had not seen before. Right then and there, I wondered, "Do I really want to go into medicine?"

To begin, in A Separate Peace, a young boy with the name of Finny passed due to a piece of bone from his leg traveling to his heart. His dear friend Gene appeared to be unphased from Finny’s death. “I did not cry then or ever about Finny. I did not cry even when I stood watching him being lowered into his family’s strait-laced burial ground outside of Boston. I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral” (194). Gene was not emotionally damaged and hurt because of Finny. Instead, Gene was relieved. A figure he always tried to do better than and wanted to always be better than was finally gone. Gene’s battle that Finny never even

The result is, as praised by Jonas’ family unit, that the decisions the Elders make are never incorrect or unsuitable. They seem omniscient, and this strengthens their claim to power, their right to make decisions for the whole community as they are excellent at it. As has been shown above, the novel contains various forms of oppression. In order for “people” to express their individuality and humanity, freedom of choice is essential. Dehumanization is observed in The Giver’s society, and life within the communities becomes deformed, manipulated, and far from being a utopia. Infact, due to all the dehumanization, fear, surveillance and inequality shown in this society, it now strongly resembles dystopian one.

In Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro the major themes in this book is hope, and free will. Hope plays as a symbol and feeling of freedom for the characters. Their curiosity is what causes their confidence to one day be free, but then is let down when having to face the truth that their life is set for them and that they must accept it. Free will is shown that clones are unable to change their fates as organ donors, but their lack of free will affects many other elements of their lives as well. For example, Ruth never achieves her dream of working in an office, and Kathy gets precious little time with Tommy. Ishiguro is ambiguous about where this lack of free will comes from because Ruth never tries to work in an

He remembered the day he and sixty other children were ordered to make paper parcels of their belongings. Brown paper and string were provided. With their bundles, they were packed like sardines into the back of two horse drawn caravans and trundled over rough roads for a week before arriving at Outcote Mill. They were bruised and in pain from their confinement, having had no room to stretch their limbs during the journey. Jumping down from the carts at journey’s end sent shafts of pain through them.

How do you classify rather someone is human or not? A tricky question has many different possible answers, but only a few that could be justified as being human. Kazuo Ishiguro has addressed this topic in his book Never Let Me Go. A reoccurring question throughout the novel is rather or not these clones are considered a human being or just another science project. Suspicious individuals of the surrounding communities in the novel, believed that the students were not human, because they could not reproduce, they did not have any parents, and for the slight fact that what the students were going through was morally unacceptable. In my opinion, Ishiguro shows that the clones are indeed human, because of their artwork, which proves that

Most people plan their future out for themselves, getting the education they need to grow up to do what they love. However, in the novel Never Let Me go by Kazuo Ishiguro, things are uniquely different for the children at Hailsham. The children who attend Hailsham are clones, who have had their entire future planned out for them by society, to donate their vital organs for humans who need them. Even though this may seem like a terrible situation to be born into, the clones do not try to change their fate, and accept it with little resistance. One of the reasons that they accept this as their fate, is that they are simply raised with the idea, therefore it is all that they know, it is “normal” for them. Also, they do not have the proper upbringing

Most people dream to have a great future, fall in love, get married, have a family, but most importantly have a wonderful life. What if your life had been planned out for you and the sole purpose of your existence was to donate your vital organs? Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go is a tragic love story between two human clones that fall in love before they know what love truly is. The clones are raised until adulthood in Hailsham, a boarding school for clones, to later become organ donors. They are trained to become nurses or “carers” to take care of “donors” as they recover after organs have been removed. The clones are involuntary forced to donate all their vital organs until death or until they “complete.” Kathy H. and Tommy are two clones whose love journey began when they were children within the walls of Hailsham. The two friends became close and confided in each other about everything. In time their friendship became into something more; however, Kathy and Tommy would find themselves in a love triangle. Before they moved to the cottages, where they learned to live among normal humans, Ruth, who was Kathy and Tommy’s friend, dated Tommy, but Tommy and Kathy loved each other. Their love would face many obstacles, but their love always found its way back to each other. In the end, with hope to buy their love some time, they find Madame to obtain a deferral but are faced with the devastating truth and would be forced to face their fate.

Never Let Me Go is an incredibly intense novel, filled with many emotional scenes. Ultimately, it includes the perfect examples of a full-blown identity crisis. The children raised at Hailsham are desperate to understand the purpose of their own lives, bodies, and minds. The children attain a sense of identity through their treasured collections, creativity, artwork and delicate social structures.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go is set in a futuristic society where clones are made essentially to provide organs for donation to their “originals” It deals with controversial issues that our culture is just beginning to encounter. The main character of Kathy reflects back on her life of the past thirty one years. As she approaches the onset of her donations, she recalls her childhood, the institute where she lived, and her friends. Kathy has a different attitude, from the other clones, with her thoughts as to why and what she is. Kathy's autonomous acceptance of the clone's fate is unique from that of her peers in that her decision to donate is motivated by caring rather than obligation, with her actions epitomizing human agency and compassion

I feel that this novel was written in a way for Kathy to process what had happened in her early childhood life as a child at Hailsham and then works towards building an understanding of her life as a carer and a future donor. Kathy also writes from the perspective that the audience knows what she is talking about in terms of not defining what carers and donors are which is a cue Ishiguro gives that lets the reader understand her perspective. In the moments when Kathy was talking about her time at Hailsham, Ishiguro would have Kathy talk in a way that was trying to clarify what she already knew. For example, on page 19 Kathy said, “Miss Geraldine was everyone’s favorite. She was gentle, soft-spoken, and always comforted you when you needed it, even when you’d done something bad, or been told off by another guardian.” Ishiguro provides these details through Kathy to explain how the life that these children experienced at schools such as Hailsham was something that only the people who have been through it can truly