In Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go,” Kathy’s role as a carer and her donors is a focus of the story from line one, but the actual role is not explained (at least not in the first half of the book). As we discover what carers and donors are we’re also subject to falsehoods about the role, such as “zipping” and with our limited knowledge our confusion about the roles grow. The hinting at meaning and assuming the reader has prior context of a role seems to parallel her own knowledge of herself, and her purpose, as she was growing up at Hailsham. Why do you think Ishiguro chose to obscure carers and donors? And are there any roles, or words, in today’s society that we speak of but don’t explain?
ENGL 360 | Future Perfect Human
Prof. Myra Seaman | Fall 2016
As someone who hasn’t quite finished the book just yet, I think that the truth behind donors and carers is something that everyone seems to be a little bit ashamed of, and I think that Tommy’s theory about the guardians telling them the truth before they’re old enough to fully understand it might be correct, that the guardians don’t want to come right out and say what they’re using these kids for so they tell them little pieces of the puzzle and allow the kids to start joking about it so it becomes less of something to fear and just a fact of life. I think Ishiguro’s goal in not explaining properly about carers and donors is to emphasize the idea that Kathy, despite knowing they truth, has been told about her life in a way that’s meant to make her feel less frightened about the truth, and therefore less knowledgeable about what the truth actually is. I also think that she doesn’t feel the need to explain what those roles are because everyone presumably already knows what the donors and carers are for, and so she doesn’t have to point it out as it would be common knowledge.
To support Amanda’s point, I agree that the roles of donors and carers are perhaps deliberately obscured by the guardians in order to mitigate the guilt they feel for using children for vital organs. This obfuscation about Hailsham students’ futures could also be a way to maintain a sense of normalcy about their upbringing. Tommy suspects as much when he explains to Kathy how the guardians parcel the information about donations “so that we were always just too young to understand properly;” this leads to misconceptions such as “unzipping” (82).
To Kathy, these roles are commonplace; therefore, she addresses the reader as if he/she is already familiar with them (The reader isn’t familiar, of course, so her lack of detail about carers and donors builds suspense). A comparable “role” in modern society, ironically, could be a terminal illness–it shares the unspoken, foreboding quality of being a donor.
Though Ishiguro throws us straight into the story, he does not explain all of the concepts at the outset. Many popular science fiction books or movies have an “exposition dump” of relevant information close to the beginning, often inserted rather clumsily into the narrative. Ishiguro’s more careful construction reveals only a few details directly to the reader, instead leaving them to glean the workings of society from Kathy’s musings and flashbacks. Although we do not yet have a concrete definition of carers and donors, the few clues we have points to a terrifying situation. By revealing just bits and pieces of the horrors at work in the book, Ishiguro builds tension and a sense of foreboding. Even more ominously, Kathy’s rather blasé recollection of these concepts demonstrates how normal she finds them, which is most perhaps most chilling of all. For example, the idea of “possibles,” apparent models from whom the children’s genetic codes were taken, was just revealed in the latest chapter. This seems to point to the children being clones, a new (but not unanticipated) revelation. Kathy, however, simply recalls that talk of “possibles” was “[not] a topic you could bring up causally” and was “awkward” (Ishiguro 139).
The obscurity of the novel serves multiple purposes. First, it maintains interest throughout the novel, keeping readers intrigued to decipher the truths and gain full understanding. Second, it facilitates the reality of the story. Since Kathy herself did not know about the truth until the end of her life, then readers, following her perspective, should not either. This parallels with modern society in that many topics adults never particularly explain to children, the kids just slowly acquire the information on their own. For example, they hear their parents discussing politics and gradually piece the realities of it together over the years. On the contrary, on a more purposeful secretive manner, children think their parents are perfect and don’t commit sins but then maybe eventually learn about affairs or other scandals. Furthermore, Ishiguro’s obscurity technique builds Never Let Me Go into the intriguing novel it is.