Childhood is a tumultuous time that is full of contradictions. It can be both wonderful and traumatic. There is happiness and grief. Everything is new. The prospect of growing up and becoming an adult generally does not come to mind. In childhood everything is in the here and now. The future is a fantasy. And when we grow up, we often miss those good times. We look back, wistful, and what was and what we never can get back. Within Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro captures this abstraction towards childhood.
While Kazuo Ishiguro Never Let Me Go is set in a dystopian future, it is very relatable. This novel features a young female protagonist, Kathy, who has been given the job of carer (who tends to people called doners). Woven through the current timeframe of this book are stories of Kathy’s youth as she remembers her childhood and growing up in a private school. She talks about her friends and the nature of growing apart from the past. In the end she realizes how vital her school years were and those moments are the most important things in her life.
Kathy holds dear to the memories. She sees that they are precious things that can be utilized. They help teach. They help grow. They can be troubling, too. They can fade quickly. But this is false for Kathy (Ishiguro 165). She holds tight to those memories. She allows them to stay fresh and vibrant. She lets them teach her the truths and the ways of the world.
In this dystopian society people are cloned. These clones are used for organ donations. Some of these people are also used as caregivers. Some people wonder if this system is proper. Others, like Kathy, realize it’s the system that can’t be changed. Kathy comes to appreciate the relationship between clones and caregivers. She sees that this world could be okay and that cloning is okay.
It took her awhile to come to this conclusion. There was much introspection and soul searching to come to this conclusion. In fact, through this novel, she got lost in those thoughts (Ishiguro 190) and when a person drew Kathy from her memories it took her a moment not to be disoriented by reality. By thinking about her past, she sees how it helped her become the woman she is today. She comes to realize that being a caregiver is a good profession. She should help others, even if those people (those clones) are crafted for organ donations. She realizes that these people are real beings with feelings and souls.
That was a remarkable revelation – that the clones had souls and those souls were a good thing. No one expected it. No one thought of it. It was assumed that these clones were vessels housing organs. It was assumed that, if the souls were allowed to propagate and grow, the clones would be furious (Ishiguro 238).
Of course that led to drastic measures. All things that could evoke emotion were removed from the clones’ life. The physicians feared what art could do to the clones. They were afraid of what would be revealed. And that, was a mistake – a mistake Kathy saw and tried to fix.
As children we do not think about the future. The young mind is not designed to do such thinking and exploration – there has not been enough development. Life is precious, especially childhood. It is a shame we often take the present for granted. Only once it’s become the past and children have years (decades even) to reminisce over the events do they become prized things. Perhaps someday that will change. Perhaps children in this modern age will appreciate their youth earlier. Perhaps brains will evolve so that could happen. Only time will tell.
Bibliography
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. London: Vintage Books , 2005.
