LECTURE

Sir Kazuo Ishiguro (1954)

• is a British novelist, screenwriter, musician, and short-story
writer. He was born in Nagasaki, Japan and moved to
Britain in 1960 with his parents when he was five.He
explored other genres, including science
fiction and historical fiction. He has received four Man
Booker Prize nominations and won the award in 1989 for
his novel The Remains of the Day, which was adapted into
a film of the same name in 1993. Time named Ishiguro's
science fiction novel Never Let Me Go the best novel of
2005 and one of the 100 best English-language novels
published between 1923 and 2005.
• In 2017, the Swedish Academy awarded Ishiguro
the Nobel Prize in Literature
Literary works
• A Pale View of
Hills (1982)
• An Artist of the Floating
World(1986)
• The Remains of the
Day (1989)
• The Unconsoled(1995)
• When We Were
Orphans(2000)
• Never Let Me Go(2005)
• The Buried Giant(2015)
• Klara and the Sun (2021)
Never let me go
2005
• By the time Never Let Me Go was published in 2005, author Kazuo
Ishiguro was already one of the most renowned and critically acclaimed
British writers. He had previously received the Whitbread and the Booker
Prize for earlier works, and his The Remains of the Day was adapted into a
highly successful film.
• Never Let Me Go addresses some contemporary issues. In 2001 and 2004,
major legislation permitting stem-cell research was passed in the United
States and the United Kingdom, raising questions about the role cloning
ought to play in improving the health of “normal” humans. It also explores
more timeless questions like childhood bullying and the role of sex in
relationships.
• Never Let Me Go was extremely well-received critically, and is included in
the curriculum of many high-school and college courses. It was adapted
into a film by Mark Romanek in 2010.
• Science Fiction as the New Realism
• Kazuo Ishiguro makes his central characters clones with a view toward addressing
the questions about humanity that literature has been trying to answer for
centuries. Ishiguro believes that clones, or other types of nonhuman or
technological characters, provide science fiction with a modern language to
discuss questions about the human soul and identity. Clones offer a vehicle to
discuss "something simple, but very fundamental, about the sadness of the human
condition." Hence, Ishiguro makes use of many of the common traits of science
fiction writing:
• nonhuman characters
• allegory (use of symbolic characters and events to form generalizations regarding
human life)
• themes of science and technology
• dystopia (imagined world where characters live in fear)
• Ishiguro got the idea for his novel from listening to a radio
program about cloning as a modern science. Not interested in
creating a futuristic setting as is typical in science fiction, Ishiguro
reinforces the realism in his novel by giving it a setting with which
he is familiar. In making such a major break from the genre of
science fiction, Ishiguro takes advantage of the opportunity to raise
problematic issues with which human beings long have struggled
and place them within a recognizably realistic environment.
Advances in Biotechnology at the Turn of the
20th Century
• The 1990 launch of the Human Genome Project marked an era of intense
activity in the field of biotechnological genetics. Identification of human genes
(responsible for human traits) allowed scientists to pinpoint the causes of
many diseases and disorders, including hearing loss, dyslexia, and several
types of cancer. By the end of the decade, the first artificial human
chromosome (structure that contains the genes of an organism) was created, a
rough map of the entire human genome was completed, and the human
chromosome's genetic code was deciphered. Embryonic stem cells (cells from
a developing life that can divide and produce more cells) were used to
generate tissue to facilitate the study of human diseases, and human skin was
created from cells for the first time in the laboratory. Genetic engineering of
plants began during this decade as well.
 Bioethics of Cloning Humans and Harvesting
Organs
• The ability to clone animals existed before the announcement that laboratories had
successfully produced Dolly, a cloned sheep born in 1996. Clones of other mammals and
amphibians had been created earlier, but they were clones produced from embryonic
(related to a developing unborn organism) cells. In this case, the resulting clones were
genetically unique. Dolly marked the first time a clone was produced from an adult cell,
which meant that she was an exact genetic duplication of another ewe six years her
senior. The ethical implications of this experiment, even before it led to a live birth,
caused the United States to create the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) to
advise on bioethical issues, such as producing a human clone. The NBAC's
recommendations regarding the cloning of human beings were released in a report in
1997. The commission recommended the halting of any experiments attempting to clone
human beings to produce children because insufficient scientific information could not
guarantee no harm would be caused to the resulting fetus (developing unborn human).
The committee took the position that the morality of creating a human being through a
process that might cause harm to that human being was unacceptable.
MAJOR CHARACTERS
 Kathy
• Kathy reminisces about her time at Hailsham because she knows she
was lucky to be at a place where she and the others were given the
closest thing possible to normal childhoods. She tells the story of her
closest friends, Ruth and Tommy, at Hailsham and the Cottages,
becomes Ruth's carer, and later becomes Tommy's carer and lover.
Kathy is introspective, nonconfrontational, calm, and claims to be an
observer. Her aim is to please people and sometimes will say what
they want to hear rather than what she thinks or feels. For most of her
time at Hailsham and the Cottages, she remains under Ruth's volatile
and dynamic personality. However, as an adult, Kathy claims she
makes her voice heard as a carer in advocating for her donors.
 Tommy
• Tommy is athletic and highly sensitive. He has
little artistic ability and is bullied not only for his
lack of talent but also for the tantrums he throws.
Tommy has always loved Kathy, but Ruth has kept
the two apart. When Tommy learns art is basically
unimportant for Hailsham students, his tantrums
stop. He and Kathy reconnect near the end of his
life and become lovers. Finally, he tries with
Kathy to defer their donations by bringing his art
to Madame as proof of the depth of his love.
Ruth
• Ruth is unpredictable, controlling, and manipulative. As a child,
she is the leader of the group, its members bowing to her will. As
a teenager, she often treats her boyfriend, Tommy, cruelly and
keeps him from loving Kathy, but when she is cared for by Kathy,
she apologizes and brings the two back together for the end of
his life. Ruth is motivated by the need for affection. Her lies and
fantasies—indeed the pretense of being special—indicate this
need. Her complex personality shows in unexpected acts both of
kindness and cruelty. But at the same time as she wants to have
what others don't, she wants to fit in.
• Madame-Madame, whose name is Marie-Claude, is an elegant woman who takes the
best art from the Hailsham students. The students don't know why but surmise she has an
art gallery. However, her purpose is to prove to people the students have souls and
should be treated as human beings. She uses their art as proof. However good
intentioned she may be, though, she is both frightened and repelled by the Hailsham
children, although she does pity them and sobs when she sees Kathy hugging a pillow
and swaying to the tune of "Never Let Me Go."
• Miss Emily-Miss Emily is a disciplinarian but neither cruel nor unreasonable. Given who
the children are, Miss Emily tries to do all she can to make their lives pleasant and
meaningful, treating them as thinking and feeling human beings rather than laboratory
creations. Along with Madame, she tries to prove to outsiders that the children are human
beings with souls, and she works behind the scenes to advocate for them.
• Miss Lucy-Miss Lucy is young, athletic, and forthright. To ease his frustration, she tries to
tell Tommy he doesn't have to be artistic. However, she ends up revealing why the
children are at Hailsham and how their lives have been planned to provide organs to
people until they die from donating them. She is dismissed from the school as a result.
• Miss Geraldine-A kind and sympathetic guardian at Hailsham. Miss Geraldine works
primarily with the younger students. The students adore her, and Ruth in particular wants
her favor. Miss Geraldine teaches art classes, and inadvertently encourages the other
students to tease Tommy when she praises his childish watercolor.
MAJOR THEMES
Inevitable Loss and Death
Every human must experience loss and death, but the clones in the novel experience such events sooner than most.
They may be able to have relationships with each other in school and at the Cottages, or even when they become
carers, but once they begin organ donations, they lose almost everyone they know. No relationship can continue
past a certain number of donations. Although the clones know this ahead of time, they are still affected by the grief
that comes with loss and death. Further, the clones that already have become donors insist that carers cannot
understand what donors experience.
They are also affected by the fear of death. Tommy expresses this fear when he talks with Kathy about the possibility
of not completing after the fourth donation and being alive but not functional as the rest of his organs are removed.
The clones experience loss and death early and often and are expected to just deal with it, but the author makes it
clear that they are as affected by these life events, if not more, than other people are. Tommy, who is the most
sensitive of the group, even cuts short his time with Kathy to spare her the grief of watching him deteriorate and
die.
Two types of class
• The world that Ishiguro has created in this novel is one of two classes of people: one with the
right to make decisions about their own lives and the right to own and control the other class.
The other class is treated like livestock rather than like human beings. The system itself is the
problem and is the reason that the clones continue to be raised for organs and killed off.
There are individuals who disagree with this horrific setup, but the best they think they can do
is to make the clones' lives comfortable while they are alive.
• This world is Ishiguro's extended metaphor for the world we live in. Systems of racial
oppression have been entrenched in our society for so long that individual white people who
fight racist ideas by claiming not to be racist and by being kind and inclusive to people of
color have a limited effect on the racially oppressive system itself. In the novel, groups of
people who believe the clone system is inhumane give up on protesting and the system
remains in place, while the detractors try to make do by being kind.
Human Clones Are Not Machines
• A major theme in the novel is the idea that no matter how a human being has been created, that person
has feelings, desires, souls, and dreams like everyone else. But the students at Hailsham and at other
similar schools have been created as clones and are raised to be live organ donors. The people who
raise them, the guardians, try to give them a good life while they are at school, but they don't encourage
them to dream beyond that. Miss Lucy tries to let them know they are not like other people and have no
choice about how their lives will go. The students know this about themselves, but they still can't help
thinking about what they want to be and how they would like their lives to go. They are, deep down, as
human as everyone else.
• One example of the students' obvious humanity is their reaction when they discover that other people
fear them. When they test Madame by walking toward her to see if she will back away, they see the
extent of her fear and repulsion. Kathy notes there has always been a sense that, eventually, she would
find out how repulsive other people find clones like her. However, when it becomes clear to her and the
other students that day with Madame, it reduces some of them to tears, a moment Kathy will not forget.
No One Can Take Away Memories
• This entire novel is Kathy's tale of her memories at Hailsham and beyond, with her
friends Ruth and Tommy. As she approaches the time when she will stop being a carer and will begin to
donate her own organs, she realizes how important her upbringing has been to her and how lucky she
was to be at Hailsham. The donors who have been at other places, particularly a man who asks her to tell
him stories of Hailsham, make her realize the guardians at her school gave her far more than clone
children at other schools received. They treated Kathy and her fellow students with love and gave them
as many experiences as they could before releasing them into the next stage of their lives, the stage of
becoming carers. Kathy finds out before she loses Tommy that Miss Emily and Madame made an effort
to convince other people that the clones deserved to be treated humanely, like real children. She also
finds out that the Hailsham students indeed were special because they were treated so well.
• As Kathy approaches what will be the end of her life, she reflects on her experiences with her friends and
on the eventual closeness she was able to develop with Ruth and Tommy. These memories are important
to her and give her life meaning. Even though she knows that her life will be slowly taken away from her,
she also knows that the memories she keeps are her own and cannot be taken away by anyone, no
matter how imperfect they may be.
 Nature versus Nurture
• The development of clones to provide people with replacement organs is a scientific process that, according to the
people who run the donation program, makes the clones less human. Generally, people believe clones are just the
results of medical experiments and not really human. But even though the students at Hailsham and at other schools
have no last names, no parents, no previous or outside lives to remember, they are still individuals just as other human
beings are. The guardians at Hailsham view the children there as more human than other schools do, as exemplified by
their arts program. All students are encouraged to express themselves creatively, and Madame uses the best pieces to
plead her case with the people who consider clones to be less than human. Without the nurture of families, without a
history, and without a future beyond being carers and donating their organs until they die, these students still have
individual talents and personalities that come out in their artwork. The nurturing from the guardians and their care of the
students gives them the opportunity to show who they are inside. Their human qualities also come out in the
interactions between students, which range from the terrible, in the case of Tommy's bullies and Ruth's jealousy, to the
wonderful, like Kathy's renewed closeness with both Ruth and Tommy.
• It is human nature to be unique individuals and express one's uniqueness, given the chance. While the clones may have
characteristics that come from their "possibles," they are still different people, their own selves, like no others. The
guardians want to prove to the public that nurture plus nature reveals that clones are just as human as everyone else.
Treating clones like experiments deprives them of the opportunity to show their humanity.
"Never Let Me Go" and the Cassette Tape
• Kathy has a cassette tape of an album called Songs After Dark. Her favorite song on the tape is "Never Let Me Go." She listens
to it obsessively and misinterprets the line "oh baby, baby, never let me go" to mean the singer is talking about an actual
baby. Kathy holds her pillow like a baby and dances to the song. In seeing Kathy dancing, Madame bursts out sobbing. The
song reflects Kathy's feeling that having children would be a happy experience, one she will never have, but it also represen ts
all of the experiences clones can never have that other people can. When she sees Kathy, Madame's usual fear and repulsion
give way to grief as she comes to understand that clones are human beings who wish and dream.
• Yet there is more than one way to look at the recording on the cassette as a symbol. The cassette is Kathy's prized possession,
which many people have. When the cassette goes missing, she is panicked. When she finds it again in Norfolk, she feels a
flood of happiness. The cassette and the favorite song on it can be considered a representation of her connection to the
outside world and all it has to offer that she cannot have, and at the same time a connection to the past. It is interesting to
note, however, that the tape is a copy of the one she had—it is not the actual item. This duplication is a fitting symbol for
clones, who are duplications of others. The title Songs After Dark also expresses the secretive nature of Kathy's emotions and
the humanity in clones that regular people outside of Hailsham don't see or believe is there.
Tommy's Drawings
• Tommy makes extremely detailed drawings of imaginary animals, and the drawings are very
good. Their intricacy and originality come as a surprise to Kathy when she sees them because
Tommy has shown no previous interest in creativity. The drawings represent the depths of
Tommy's soul and come from Tommy's strong belief in the rumor that art will lead him and a
lover to defer their donations. The need to impress Madame with the quality of his soul makes
him pull out all the stops and create. Ruth makes fun of the drawings, and Kathy goes along
with Ruth but feels terrible. She later tells Tommy his drawings are wonderful. Kathy's love of
the drawings and Ruth's dismissal of them make it clear to the reader that Kathy loves Tommy.
When Tommy and Kathy find out later that the rumor is not true, Tommy stops drawing for the
most part but doesn't completely quit. His continuing to draw shows that his creations, and
the need to create them, are actually much more than a way to make a relationship last longer.
They are an expression of who Tommy is inside: complicated and intricate, carefully crafted.
Hailsham
• Hailsham symbolizes the idea that clones are human beings, not just medical procedures. The guardians at Hailsham treat the
children well and teach them to take care of each other. By having them create art, they show the world that the clones have
souls and are therefore human beings. Buying each other's work demonstrates that clones have an appreciation for individual
beauty. Each child gravitates toward a different type of art, both the act of making it and the act of appreciating it.
• For the clones who did not go there, Hailsham represents the idea that some clones have more privileges than others. They
believe that the Hailsham students get to have deferrals for their donations if they can show that they are in a couple and are
truly in love. Chrissie and Rodney want Ruth to keep talking about her desires in her future life so that she'll tell them how she
and Tommy will get a deferral. The donor Kathy has at the beginning of the novel wants to hear Hailsham stories so that he
can experience them vicariously as well. People don't know exactly how the Hailsham students are special, but Kathy realizes
that they are special because their guardians believe they are humans deserving of respect and love. The guardians treat
them accordingly and Kathy finds out that her experiences at Hailsham are not the norm for clones.
• The real Hailsham is a town in East Sussex, in the southeastern part of England. It began as a medieval market town and
continues to be surrounded by rural farmland. The importance of farming and bringing livestock to market, as well as the later
addition of ropemaking mills, eerily echo the plot of the novel. The Hailsham students are, in essence, livestock raised for
their organs. Though in Hailsham the school, they are treated like human beings with souls. They are, however, irrevocably
tied to their fate, which not even the most ardent supporters of their humanity can change.
Madame's Gallery
• Madame's rumored gallery represents the ideas children have and
spread that are not necessarily true but still have a grain of truth.
The students realize Madame is taking the best examples of their
art, making them think that others must be seeing it in a gallery.
Later, Tommy believes the souls represented by the art help
Madame decide who belongs with whom, romantically. For
Tommy, Ruth, and Kathy, as well as Chrissie and Rodney, the gallery
represents a chance at being able to experience and enjoy a love
relationship, just as people who are not clones are allowed to do.
LITERARY ELEMENTS
• Type Of Work Novel
• Genre dystopia; science fiction; coming-of-age story
• Time And Place Written England, between 1990 and the early 2000s
• Date Of First Publication 2005
• Narrator Kathy H.
• Point Of View The narrator (Kathy) speaks in the first person, so the reader only sees her point of view. Kathy describes her memories
of characters and events subjectively, offering her own thoughts and reflections. She frequently makes assumptions about the
thoughts and motivations of others.
• Setting (Time) Late 1990s, although Kathy’s memories reach as far back as the early 1970s.
• Setting (Place) Various locations in England, including the (fictional) Hailsham school, the (also fictional) Cottages, and the towns of
Norfolk, Dover, and Kingsfield.
• Protagonist Kathy H.
• Major Conflict Kathy wrestles with the loss of her childhood friends Ruth and Tommy by turning to her memories the past, recalling
her complex relationship with each one and with the Hailsham school where they grew up together.
• Rising Action Kathy recalls growing up with Ruth and Tommy at Hailsham, where ambiguous references to their future as “donors”
punctuate their idyllic childhood. As they become young adults, they hope in different ways for the possibility of changing or
deferring this future.
• Climax Kathy and Tommy visit Madame’s house, where Miss Emily cuts off their last hope for more time together when she reveals
that deferrals on donations do not exist.
• Falling Action Kathy spends a last few weeks with Tommy before he completes on his fourth donation, leaving her with her memories
as she waits to become a donor herself.