How does one even summarize Never Let Me Go? It seems odd to tell the setting and idea of the novel straightforwardly. There is a school for clone children, who are raised and board together, and after their primary education they receive a sort of communal secondary education, through which they learn to drive and communicate with human society, and then comes the nursing (called "caring") and organ donating, and finally, "completing," when the clone has served its ultimate purpose, and dies. Ishiguro manages to pull out and focus on the details from a clone's life and weaves a compelling tale which frames beautifully ideas about purpose, individuality, and what it means to be in touch with our own feelings.
Part one deals mostly with Kathy H.'s time at Hailsham, the name of the boarding school where she and other clone children are educated and cared for by a rather stereotypical school master and other teachers, called "guardians." I find the name of the school intriuging. At first glance, I thought of Mrs. Havisham, the frightening woman from Dickens' Great Expectations. It's really not too far of a stretch, I think. There is a great horror associated with Mrs. Havisham, what with the spiderweb wedding cake, the unfulfilled desire, the rottenness of her body and home, and yet, the hope that she offered those who would behave according to her wishes. Her influence, as rotten as she was, allowed her a great persuasiveness, and even though we know, creeping through her house with Pip, taking in the grotesque scenery, that she is unwell and her words vitriolic, we find that perhaps she has a point, perhaps somehow we will be able to right the great wrong that was done here, our pity the catalyst for her power. Is something different going on at Hailsham? I'm not sure. The images and horrors conjured up by the association are eerie enough.
Then I looked at the name on a connotative level. Hail-sham. This stands out as more relevant now that I've finished the novel. There is a loyalty to the school to which the children cling desperately. We forgive them this, because they have never known anything else; still, their determination to trust the institution is always heartbreaking. As wizened Westerners, we know better than to trust the institution, don't we? But when we witness the trust of the children, and become aware that they can't leave the life prescribed for them, the life they were bred for, we experience the dread, the hopelessness that will surely overtake them as they come closer to realizing their fate. We are aware of the scam, the sham, from the beginning, and naming the place Hail-sham reinforces the the sadness experienced as the children salute and give reverence to that which has pulled the wool over their eyes.
Kathy H. doesn't ever come right out and say that there is no choice to walk away from the life of a donor. In fact, she rarely comes right out and declares anything. She remembers, she recalls, but even then, when suddenly in the story she is sobbing, it is shocking, for we aren't privy to her emotions. She rarely feels a certain way, she simply accepts whatever is expected of her, and when her personal choice is an option, she usually does the smart thing, or the reasonable thing, or the sensible thing. She is compassionate, to be sure, but she never shows distress, and this enables her to be a good hospice nurse for clones who are recovering from donations or are about to complete. There are times in the novel when I thought to myself, why can't you just run away? Why can't you defect? There is no information in the novel to suggest that they are tracked or micro-chipped, as in other works with the clone as backup setting. Thus, I believe that Ishiguro is suggesting that there is no need for such management. If you believe that you have a place in society, and that place is instilled in your consciousness as important, vital even, then you will not need to be monitored, or tracked. You will simply do as you're told. You won't walk away, because where would you go? You're inherently different, so who would accept you? The novel answers the Biblical question posed by Satan, what won't a man give up in exchange for his soul? The human society in Never Let Me Go has answered with a resounding nothing, deeming the clones a spiritual waste, a land ripe for harvesting. They have let the ethical question hang, and proceeded forward without investigation. It seems that once heart disease, cancer, and neurological disease were a thing of the past, the question of whether or not raising clones in order to slowly harvest their vital organs is ethical became a taboo question. So they live as a taboo, recognizable, but mostly unspeakable.
The novel sets this up, and then presents arguments against using the clones as donors. Obviously Kathy H.'s story is a testament to her humanity, however vague and remote her emotions seem. The fact that she even desires to tell her story is more human than anything else about her, including her search for her origins, her love of Tommy, and her protectiveness of Ruth. She has an idea of the infinite, as evidenced by the title of the novel, which is a reference to a song that moves her when she is a child. It's a song that she feels expresses the loss associated with infertility, and that in the event that an infertile woman was to have a miraculous baby, she would hold that baby to her chest and sing, never let me go. The idea that the clone would imagine such a thing is so ironic, for not only are the clones infertile, but their whole purpose is to ensure the health of the public. Humans can't bear to let each other go, so they grow surrogate humans to replace their diseased parts. Kathy H.'s attachment to the song reinforces her place in society. She doesn't desire to have a baby, but the scene shows her empathy for the society that created her, and the purpose for which she was "born." This underscores her humanity, but also demonstrates how important it is for the clones to identify with humans, to be subordinate to ones who need them. Kathy feels throughout the novel that she is accomplishing her work, her purpose, and she wonders only briefly if there were any alternative.
It is only later in the book that the mystery surrounding Hailsham is revealed. A few academics and scientists decided that instead of growing the clones in an animalistic way, in bad conditions, they should bring them up like proper school children. MIss Emily, the school master, and Marie-Claude, her partner, explain the school as an experiment in proving that the clones have souls and are as human as they come, aside from their all but guaranteed infertility (although it is not stated directly whether or not they are bred this way or if it is a side-effect of cloning). Miss Emily and Marie-Claude had the idea that to educate and culture their students would mean a better life for them, allow them to be "sensitive and intuitive." It gets quite muddled, and I expect that is what Ishiguro intended. The main argument for the failure of Hailsham is that the politcal climate changed, and during a time period when people were especially fearful of clones gaining human rights, their supporters vanished. Society did not want to compete with clones that were genetically altered, or bred for superiority. So, the donor program resumed as a government run institution.
This is of importance because Kathy H. has sought out a deferral; she thinks that she and Tommy can apply for a few years together, living as a natural human couple, before resuming their donations. This is a baseless rumor, and they are utterly defeated when filled in on their complete lack of any future other than that they have been raised to believe in.
I don't think Ishiguro wants his audience to admire Miss Emily, and my strongest evidence comes from the scene in which she is sitting with Kathy H. and Tommy, explaining about Hailsham, and the falseness of the deferral rumor. Before she discloses the information about Hailsham she mentions something about a piece of furniture that she is having moved that day:
Unfortunately, my dears, I won't be able to entertain you for as long as I'd like just now, because in a short while some men are coming to take away my bedside cabinet. It's a quite wonderful object. George has put protective padding around it, but I've insisted I'll accompany it myself all the same. You never know with these men. They handle it roughly, hurl it around their vehicle, then their employer claims it was like that from the start. It happened to us before, so this time, I've insisted on going along with it. It's a beautiful object, I had it with me at Hailsham, so I'm determined to get a fair price.
It's probably a high school-ish insight, but look at what care Miss Emily takes of her beautiful, wonderful object. She is going to make sure that no man abuses it and harms it, and she is very sentimental about it, and wants the full value of it's worth. I postulate that the disappointment Miss Emily and Marie-Claude feel about the failure of Hailsham is less about the eventual process of donation and completion the students will endure, but the dissolution of their pet project, the underestimation of their beautiful, wonderful students that have turned out so well.
I wonder if Ishiguro is simply, reasonably implying that whenever we objectify humans we cross an ethical boundary that undermines our ability to practice fairness. When we come to a cloudy grey area in scientific advancement, can't an argument be that if we proceed, if we calculate the benefit, the value of the advancement in dollars, or selfish gain at another's tragic loss, then, shouldn't we just stop, and be still? Of course we want a cure for cancer, for Alzheimer's, for heart disease, but isn't it mostly because we never want to let our loved ones go? And to the professionals whose aim it is to ensure the ethical treatment of humans and other animals, what is an obvious gauge of their success? Pain free, cruelty free, good conditions, safety. organic, needs met, and so on. But it's more like the novel, isn't it? It's truly gauged by the leaning of society at the time. And we are truly a society that refuses to accept death as inevitable, suffering as reality, and lifetimes as undetermined in length.
Ishiguro is willing to tell us that yes, if we pursue stem cell research and cloning experiments we will someday have the ability to live without fear of many diseases that plague us today, but many will still suffer, and the price has to paid. He suggests that the highest price we pay is within the forfeiture of our own ability to be still, to live free from harming others, and to let go. Their cost is incalculable, but permeate our existence, as the loss permeates the novel. Our ability to be compassionate, to exercise restraint, to truly love others will be lost, caught in the fences of some windy cosmic wasteland, never to return. The lies we tell ourselves to fill the ensuing void will be rejected like a faulty transplant, as nothing can replace our humanity.
Yet, what of the use and treatment of human beings as objects, and then as lost objects, as I think Ishiguro suggests? Foremost, the clones are objectified and harvested as unfeeling, unthinking non-humans. Their objectification is justified by the immense desire humans have to hold on to life, at any cost. The clones from Hailsham are lost, because these particular clones exist outside of the role ascribed to them by the government, that is, they attend a prestigious boarding school in which they are observed and tested to determine if they are indeed objects, or if, as the book says, they possess a "soul." They are not subjected to the inhuman conditions in childhood belonging to the majority of clones. They are not like the others of their kind, and they are certainly not like humans, and yet they, or at least Katherine, feels that as such, as a former student of Hailsham, she is of more, or better use to humans than her run of the mill peers. What gave her a seemingly better life only served to solidify her worth in the society that will continue to use her inhumanely. The end, the harvesting of her life, as well as finally her vital organs, is justified because she now means more to the clone program than ever. She has learned compassion, empathy, and these serve to make her a better carer and nurse, and girlfriend, and friend, and yet, she is still lost, because these qualities only serve to make her a better person, an a person she is not. She is a clone, with no rights, with no freedom. She sets off on a journey which ends where it began, a room filled with medical equipment, designed to prolong the lives of those true human beings with rights, and precisely empowered with the ability to strip clones of their utter humanity.
Paradoxically, what gives Katherine her intimate sense of self also blinds her to the utter injustice of her existence.
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