What struck me the most while reading Never Let Me Go was how complacent Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were regarding their futures. The visceral reaction readers have to the Hailsham students' fate does not match the casual acceptance of that fate from the students themselves. While the formal announcement of donations made by Miss Lucy occurs fairly late in the students' lives (relative to their untimely deaths), this complacency is most likely a product of the implicit knowledge Hailsham students had all along of their existence as clones. Kathy mentions this intuition throughout the entire novel, and it is this sense of "knowing before they knew" that I believe detaches the students' understanding of mortality from that of our own. Miss Lucy sees this more clearly than any other human, and it is why she ultimately tells the Hailsham students why they exist: "The problem, as I see it, is that you've been told and not told. You've been told, but none of you really understand" (Ishiguro, p. 81). While Miss Lucy believes her students' fuzzy intuition about their futures should be replaced with cold hard facts, I am curious about the power behind that intuition and what makes it different from our understanding of our own inevitable deaths.
Kathy explains that as they grow up, Hailsham students slowly become aware of why they are special, much in the same way they begin to understand sex. Apart from the fact that she couldn't get pregnant, Kathy's relationship with sex as a teenager is more or less unremarkable: "I needed to get familiar with sex, and it would be just as well to practice first with a boy I didn't care about too much" (84). For readers, learning about sex is a natural part of growing up (much like it is for Kathy), but learning about death is not nearly as salient because most of us have no idea how we will die. The disparity between the clones' complacency and our own horror surrounding their deaths is even more obvious when we learn about the rumor behind the process of "completing". While talking to Tommy about his upcoming fourth donation, Kathy explains to readers: "You'll have heard the same talk. How maybe, after the fourth donation, even if you've technically completed, you're still conscious in some sort of way... how there's nothing to do except watch your remaining donations until they switch you off" (279). Of course, we haven't heard the same talk, and we are shocked that donors may have to go through such torture. For Kathy and Tommy, however, the rumor only adds some detail to what their death-by-donation might look like. Ultimately, I think the conversation around mortality in Never Let Me Go is compelling because it brings up important questions: Is death feared simply because it is unknown? If Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth were able to live fulfilling lives knowing they were donors, can we live even better lives if we appreciate and accept, rather than fear, death?
I agree that the students’ complacency towards death is a result of their implicit knowledge of it. The Hailsham students were always told just enough information at specific ages that they logically knew it yet never truly understood. For example, Kathy says that “Tommy thought it possible the guardians had, throughout all [their] years at Hailsham, timed very carefully and deliberately everything they told [them], so that [they] were always just too young to properly understand the latest piece of information” (Ishiguro, 82). While Kathy doesn’t fully believe this theory, she does agree that there is some truth in it because she feels that she always somehow knew about donations and that she had “heard everything somewhere before” (83). This allowed the students to consume the information but never comprehend the truths and implications hidden within it. Because the Hailsham student never had the opportunity to understand just how much was being taken from them, they enjoyed the life they did have with no worries about what their futures may hold. Perhaps, in a less sinister viewpoint, the Hailsham staff’s intention in not explaining the tragedy of the situation was to allow them to fully enjoy their lives. Likely, if the students were aware of their impending mortality, they would be focusing more on their dwindling days rather than enjoying each one. While it is not the best solution, it did allow the students of Hailsham to enjoy their lives as similar to an average child as possible.
ReplyDeleteI was also struck by how Kathy, Ruth and Tommy were all so accepting of their fate of dying at a fairly young age from their time as donors. It seems like once the students leave Hailsham and they go to The Cottages, that they have opportunities, if they really wanted to, to leave and potentially escape the future planned out for them. However, this idea of running away is never shared in Kathy’s telling of her life and the memories she shares throughout the book. Instead, we learn through Kathy’s memories how they were, “told and not told” about their purpose as donors and they all take that as the only path for them.
ReplyDeleteDuring their time at The Cottages we do see the occasional discussion about other possible futures for themselves, but this was really for entertainment, not so much a realistic hope, such as Ruth’s dream to work in an office. However, it is not pursued, and Kathy brings this up, even saying, “If you believed yourself special, you should at least have asked. You should have gone to Madame and asked” (Ishiguro, 231). Ruth then argues she doesn’t know how she would have done that, but perhaps she was also being held back by the unknown. The students all grow up being told they would become carers and donors and that would be their life. The possibility of another path wasn’t realistic, so to even attempt to follow it would have been new and out of the ordinary and brought on a great deal of uncertainty. This point strongly ties to your closing remarks on the impact of the unknown on how we view death compared to the way the clones accept it and would be interesting to further analyze.