Never Let Me Go

By Kazuo Ishiguro

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 Characters

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Kazuo Ishiguro

 Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki of Japan in

November 8, 1954.
 He moved to England as a child (in 1960) and
attended private school in Surrey. And the
element of this private school is reflected in
the novel itself through the Hailsham
Boarding School.
 He studied English and philosophy at Kent
University and became a social worker.
 He later got a masters in creative writing
from University of East Anglia.
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Kazuo Ishiguro

 He has written a number of novels.

1. A Pale View of Hills (1982)
2. An Artist of the Floating World (1986)
3. The Remains of the Day (1989)
4. The Unconsoled (1995)
5. When We Were Orphans (2000)
6. Never Let Me Go (2005)
7. The Buried Giant (2015)
 Many of his narrator are like Kathy, who tell
stories through memories and restrain their
emotions.
 In 2017 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature
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Never Let Me Go
Story

It is the 1990s in England which is a dystopian world where people’s

lives are prolonged through cloning.
The clones, who are called student, grow up away from the rest of
the world.
Once they become adults, they donate their organs until they are
complete.
 Carers are clones who have not yet started donating organs, and
they look after those who have.
This novel imagines the future which is fantastic for human being
who don’t die and live for very long time but this is as a result of
having clone.
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Never Let Me Go
Some Terms and Their Original Meaning

BUMPER CROP
It’s box full of toys which are provided to the kids of Hailsham. May be
they are trash and used ones but these toys are precious for those kids.

GALLERY
It’s a place where students’ art work are kept and according to Tommy,
these art works represent the inner soul of a person.

POSSIBLE or ORIGINALS
These are the persons on whom these clones are made or modelled
according their genetic information.
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Never Let Me Go
Some Terms and Their Original Meaning

CARERS
They are clones who have not yet started donating organs and they look after those
who have started donating organs.

COMPLETE
It’s the stage when the clone has completed their biological life and their only
purpose now is to donate their vital organs, basically this term means DEATH.
(death of a clone).

DEFERRAL
According to Hailsham’s student if there are two people who are in love and if they
can prove or verify it, then, they’ll be given few years (up to 3 years) together
before they’ll start their organ donations.
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Never Let Me Go
Character List

Kathy : The protagonist and the narrator of the novel. She is a thirty-one-year-old
carer who wants to make sense of her memories before becoming a donor at the end
of the year.

Ruth : Kathy’s childhood friend and a fellow student at Hailsham.

Tommy : Kathy’s childhood friend, also a student at Hailsham. As a child, Tommy

struggles with “being creative” and is teased for his lack of artistic abilities.

Miss Lucy : One of the guardians at Hailsham. Miss Lucy has a brisk but
sympathetic attitude, and works mostly with the older students.

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Never Let Me Go
Character List

Miss Emily : The head guardian at Hailsham. Miss Emily is older than the other
guardians, and the students generally find her threatening. However, they respect her
decisions and her presence at Hailsham makes them feel safe.

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.

Madame (Marie-Claude) : A Hailsham benefactor. Madame occasionally visits

Hailsham to take away the best student artwork, which she is rumored to place in a
personal gallery.

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Never Let Me Go
Character List

Chrissie : A veteran student who lives at the Cottages, and Rodney’s girlfriend.
Chrissie did not attend Hailsham, and seems to be in admiration of the Hailsham
students. She is kind and welcoming when they arrive, but Kathy correctly suspects
that that she has a hidden motive. Chrissie later “completes” on her second donation.

Rodney : Another veteran who lives at the Cottages, and Chrissie’s boyfriend.
Friendly and easy-going, Rodney wears his hair in a long ponytail and likes to talk
about reincarnation. Rodney did not attend Hailsham.

Laura : A Hailsham student who later moves to the Cottages with Kathy. Laura is an
energetic and naughty girl at Hailsham, where she is part of Kathy and Ruth’s friend
group. Laura encourages Kathy to become Ruth’s carer.

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Never Let Me Go
Character List

Hannah : Another Hailsham student who moves to the Cottages with Kathy.
Alice : Another Hailsham student who moves to the Cottages with Kathy.
Harry C : A Hailsham student with whom Kathy briefly considers having sex as a
teenager.
Keffers : The bad-tempered caretaker at the Cottages.

Ruth’s Possible : An unnamed woman who works at an open-plan office in Norfolk.

Kathy and her friends initially believe that she resembles Ruth, suggesting that the
woman might be Ruth’s “possible,” or the person from whose DNA Ruth was
cloned.

Martin : A carer who lives in Norfolk. Martin used to live at the Cottages, and is
friends with Rodney and Chrissie. Although he never appears in the novel, Rodney
and Chrissie take Ruth to visit him after their failed search for Ruth’s possible.
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Never Let Me Go
Main Characters

Kathy H.
o Kathy H. is the novel’s protagonist and narrator.
o She is a thirty one-year-old carer at the beginning of the novel, although she is
preparing to soon become a donor.
o Kathy has worked as a carer for nearly twelve years, much longer than most of the
students with whom she grew up at Hailsham. Although she is still a relatively
young adult, she has outlived most of her childhood friends.
o Kathy spends her days looking backwards, recalling her memories of the people
that she has lost. Through these memories, the novel traces her complex
relationships with her Hailsham friends Tommy and Ruth.
o Kathy’s reflections also preserve the memory of Tommy and Ruth, both of whom
have already “completed.”

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Never Let Me Go
Main Characters

Kathy H.
o However, Kathy is also an unreliable narrator. She is presenting events from
only her point of view.
o Kathy’s memories likewise show her reliance on silence and indirection,
especially when it comes to expressing her emotions.
o As a student at Hailsham, Kathy exhibits restraint and self-consciousness.
o Kathy also frames herself as a careful observer.
o At the Cottages, for instance, Kathy realizes that many of the veteran couples
have copied their gestures of affection from television.
o She is quieter in childhood, in contrast to her friend Ruth.

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Never Let Me Go
Main Characters

Ruth
o Ruth is Kathy’s close childhood friend.
o Kathy lives with Ruth at Hailsham and at the Cottages, and later becomes
Ruth’s carer when Ruth is a donor.
o At Hailsham, Ruth is outspoken, charismatic and hot-tempered.
o She is a natural leader among her friends, although she is often highly
controlling as well.
o Ruth is a foil to Kathy’s quieter and more guarded personality, and the two
argue frequently.
o As a teenager, Ruth also begins a longstanding romantic relationship with
Tommy. This is an underlying and unspoken source of tension in her
friendship with Kathy, who has romantic feelings for Tommy as well.

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Never Let Me Go
Main Characters

Ruth
o At the Cottages, Ruth lives in the fantasy of her “dream future” and pins her
hopes on the vague story of her “possible,” or a person who resembles her and
from whose DNA she may have been cloned, in Norfolk.
o Ruth can be unreliable and unkind to both Tommy and Kathy. In her attempts
to fit in at the Cottages, she often ignores and mocks both of them.
o However, Ruth has the capacity for deep big-heartedness and thoughtfulness
as well. When Kathy loses her Judy Bridgewater tape at Hailsham, for
instance, Ruth orders their classmates to search for it and then gifts her a
different tape as a substitute. Later, Ruth also offers Kathy and Tommy the
gift of Madame’s address, which demonstrates Ruth’s inherent hopefulness
because that she believes Kathy and Tommy still have the chance to ask
Madame for a deferral on their donations.

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Never Let Me Go
Main Characters

Tommy
o Tommy is Kathy’s close childhood friend, for whom she also has romantic
feelings.
o At Hailsham, Tommy struggles with “being creative” and is teased for his
lack of artistic abilities.
o He develops a violent temper.
o Tommy remains anxious and self-conscious about his artistic abilities as a
young adult, initially keeping his artwork a secret at the Cottages. However,
he also begins to derive pride and personal satisfaction from drawing.
o Tommy is more straightforward than Kathy and Ruth.
o Tommy usually expresses his confusion or doubt aloud.

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Never Let Me Go
Main Characters

Tommy
o He also lacks the kind of emotional restraint that Kathy and Ruth exhibit.
While Kathy and Ruth tend to express their angers and frustrations indirectly,
Tommy tends to express violent temper.
o Yet Tommy also has very different relationships with Ruth and Kathy. He
maintains a longstanding but difficult romantic relationship with Ruth, who at
times ignores him.
o Meanwhile, he bonds with Kathy over their mutual desire to discover the truth
about Hailsham.
o Tommy tends to trust Kathy with his biggest secrets, including his odd
conversations with Miss Lucy.

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 Thank You

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