Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, celebrating its twentieth anniversary this April, remains a deeply haunting dystopia today.
Coming to the end of her career as a carer, Kathy casts her mind back to her time spent with her friends, Tommy and Ruth. As children, they attend a boarding school nestled in the idyllic English countryside called Hailsham, where students are well-nurtured and educated in art and literature by “guardians.” As the trio mature and enter the outer world for the first time, they confront unsettling realities about their place in the world – more specifically, as clones created to donate their vital organs and essentially end their lives at 30.
Through first-person narration, Kathy reflects on juvenile rivalries, arguments, and fancies. In particular, she examines how art shapes the lives of students at Hailsham, with a selection of their artwork displayed each year at the elusive “Gallery.” Linked to one’s social position, it is an expression of identity and, as the characters discover years later, a test of their humanity. Their old headmistress reveals, “we took away your art… to prove you had souls at all.” The categorisation of Never Let Me Go as science fiction is arguably misleading, for Ishiguro remains vague about the techno-scientific details of how clones are modelled and created. Instead, he is preoccupied with the intricacies of what it means to be human, what to do with the short time we have, and dispelling the idea that one needs to contribute great things for one’s life to be considered valuable.
Hailsham eventually shuts down, the guardians failing in their project to demonstrate to the world how rearing clones in humane environments cultivates beings quite indistinguishable from “normals.” Society prefers to push the atrocities being committed out of plain sight, denying them humanity in order to feel better. This dismal outcome is one that is all too real. In the face of so many horrors worldwide, we often feel powerless and ignored when trying to enact change, through activism or other means.
Miss Lucy, a guardian, claims the problem is that they’ve been “told and not told” about their fates. This blurry middle ground allows the students to kindle rumours and dreams, to fool themselves into a fantasy that is out of reach. It keeps them complacent and obedient. Today, this resonates as a call to scrutinise what we are told and not told by politicians and the media, as well as the texts befalling attempts of censorship. As long as the horror doesn’t occur on our doorstep, this (willed) obscurity lets us lull ourselves into a sense of normality – but we are nonetheless complicit in our silence, our refusal to recognise, acknowledge, or examine the injustice in our world. Never Let Me Go forces us to confront the price of this conformity to oppressive social systems.
Ishiguro’s language is matter-of-fact. For some, this makes the novel drag, but it speaks to the acceptance Kathy has settled into. At the end of the book, tears roll down her face, but she isn’t “sobbing or out of control.” She retains robotic composure. Facing the loss of her greatest friends, this is less apathy, more a consequence of normalised violence against clones; they are conditioned to believe they should dutifully surrender to their destinies. Their deaths are labelled “completion[s]”, alongside other euphemisms likening their fleeting existences to jobs and abstracting them further from humanity. It is perhaps ironic that Tommy, rejected by his peers on account of his troubled artistic expression, is the one most led by emotion from which many tantrums emerge. He is described as “raging, shouting, flinging his fists and kicking out” – an undeniably human expression of frustration and sorrow. His screams are the closest demonstration of genuine outrage. Nevertheless, Tommy returns to the car that delivers him back to the care centre.
Likewise, the last line of the novel tells us that Kathy, too, simply returns to her car “to drive off to wherever it was [she] was supposed to be.” This vehicle allows Kathy to carry out her role in a system that treats her as expendable; each time she gets behind the wheel symbolises compliance and relinquishing of agency over her life. Never Let Me Go is not a story of rebellion or hope, much to the disappointment of many readers. Why don’t they fight for their freedom? Ishiguro points out that, historically and presently, many of us simply make do with our circumstances, lacking the courage or means to transcend the social norms into which we are born, or so entrenched that we neglect to question them.
Twenty years on, Never Let Me Go is a poignant mirror of our terrifying reality. It remains a chilling reminder of how easily we accept the unacceptable – until it is far too late.
Book cover of “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro