Never Let Me Go & Autobiographical Memoirs
Much of the novel is narrated from Kathy and the timeline is often non-linear. The novel is broken into three parts, and the three parts closely align with Kathy’s three stages of life. Kathy is quite good at being a carer, but her work is extremely difficult and lonely. The novels progression closely resembles the human development cycle. We see part one talk about Halisham the school, and how it’s a lot like primary school. Students interact with each other, and friendships are formed. Part two is the next phase of life, much like high school or college. You have an infusion of new people like the “veterans” that come in and mingle with Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth. As you get older, attraction and formal relationships begin to emerge. We even see a sense of jealousy between Kathy and Ruth over Tommy. This jealousy concept is analogous to teenage love and crushes. Finally, at Part Three, Kathy becomes a carer. This is very much like when a person finishes colleges and begins to join the workforce. During this transitional period for humans, you lose the chance to socialize with people you were once close to. People are usually so consumed with work, there is not enough time in the day to socialize, and they often become lonely. Kathy is experiencing this as a carer.
The pacing in part three seemed very quick. I correlate the pacing to the quote “life flashes before your eyes.” Kathy grew up with Tommy and Ruth for most of the book. Then suddenly in Part three, we learn Ruth already is a donor. It was also found out that Ruth had a bad first donation. Kathy eventually becomes Ruth’s carer. It seems like just recently the two friends were fighting, and now we see Ruth almost near completion (another term for deceased). In part three the characters spend a lot of time reminiscing the old days at Halisham. Kathy noted that when she and Tommy ganged up on Ruth in the car, Ruth would have snapped back at them in the old days. Kathy reminded Ruth of the magazine ad they saw near the cottages, and Tommy recalls their trip to Norfolk. All these memories correlate with being adults and reminiscing about the past. Ruth and Kathy had ongoing tensions in their friendship, due to Kathy’s unspoken feelings for Tommy. Ruth and Tommy shared a past as a couple, which separates them from Kathy. With life being so short, Ruth tries to make amends with Kathy with hope. Ruth hopes to change the future between Tommy and Kathy, by giving Madame’s’ address, which represents a chance at deferral. Halisham was closed down, and deferral was a chance at not becoming a donor. Ruth’s apology and her gift show that despite her flaws, she is still good inside. The friendship becomes more open and nostalgic. Instead of speaking about the future, Ruth and Kathy look back on their shared memories of the past. Ruth turns to memories of Hailsham in the face of her coming donation, while her only allusions to the future concern Kathy and Tommy. This is much like when we are faced with death, we try to make up to the people we care about if there were any misunderstandings.
Ruth completes after her third donation, and Kathy is now left to be Tommy’s carer. The romance begins to bud, and they become physically intimate. A long overdue loving relationship, is up against time. Tommy is nearing completion, so Kathy and Tommy travel to Madame’s house to seek deferral. Tommy and Kathy find the answers that they have been seeking since childhood, but it ends in disappointment when Miss Emily once and for all dismisses the possibility of a deferral. Hailsham thus lives up to its name, exposed as a “sham” maintained through elaborate acts of deception by Miss Emily and Madame. Although Miss Emily and Madame attempted to show the clones’ humanity to the outside world, they themselves struggled to believe what they preached. Tommy in his last days said to Kathy that although they have loved each other their whole lives, they cannot stay together forever. Tommy and Kathy share a goodbye kiss, and then Kathy drives away.
In “Speculative Memoirs” by Keith Macdonald, he presents information on how “Let Me Go” has many techniques and contains elements of an autobiographical memoir. Keith Macdonald states that we can see the autobiographical exchange is both pervasive and effective in this context. Never Let Me Go is a fictional novel that was able to replicate an autobiography. Although the novel has a horrific back story of harvesting clone’s organs for the sole purpose of science, as the story progresses, the main text focuses on the everyday nature of the friendships and love affairs that grow in Hailsham. The novel has particularly focused on the lives of the clones rather than a dogmatic take on the institutionalized cloning with scientific jargon. I tend to agree much what Macdonald is trying to promote here. We see the novel broken down into stages of life and memory. It correlates very closely with human development, yet Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were clones and not viewed by Madame and Miss Emily as actual humans. Yet the way this story was told was through narration by Kathy. We see all the human elements and believe Kathy is real. Macdonald supports this proposition “The novel draws attention to itself as a construction, strengthening the illusion that it is the narrator telling this story, and that the reader acknowledges the authenticity of the narrative, distancing Ishiguro from the writing process.”
Frankenstein is a tale like Let Me Go. Frankenstein can be viewed as a battle between two autobiographies vying for the reader’s attention in a contest for limited moral superiority. In Frankenstein we have Victor begging Walden, to make sure he recounts the tale of creature and how he was made. Victor was obsessed in making sure all the details were correct on the birth of Frankenstein and the potential danger he was capable of. We also get an autobiographical account with the creature himself. The readers understand how creature grew up and learned how cruel mankind could be. The readers sympathize with creature much like how they sympathize with the clones. The clones and creatures were not deemed human, but they display more elements of proper humanity. Victor and Miss Emily were human, but they were cruel overlords with absolutely no sympathy. Miss Emily denied deferral and giving Kathy and Tommy love, much like Victor denied creature a mate to live with happily in love.
1.) Looking back in time, do you have any life experiences you can relate with the characters Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy when you were growing up?
2.) Did Kathy and the clones seem more human than Madame and Miss Emily?
3.) Do you agree with Macdonald that an autobiographical memoir style was a good way to present the novel Let Me Go? What other genre/style would be effective?
I agree with McDonald’s autobiographical memoir style. The style works because many readers can relate to the text on different levels. MacDonald includes many emotions that we as humans feel during the stages of our lives. Especially the circumstance that is given to with the characters Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy. I think most of us have that kind of relationship when we are in high school. Another style that would be very effective is a simple fiction story. It does not have to be autobiographical. This book reminds me of “Fun Home: A Tragicomic” by Alison Bechdel. Why? Because the story is also autobiographical. In that text, she also manipulates the way her father is portrayed much like “Frankenstein” and “Never Let Me Go”.
I definitely agree that the memoir style is the most effective. As discussed in class it is interesting that it is from the point of one of the clones and not the creators. It might be interesting to also read the entire tale from the point of one of the guardians or Madame herself. How did they feel when their prior “students” left and maybe even completed? What emotions did they feel interacting with such realistic children who had all of the same emotions that a “real” child had.
I don’t think that Kathy and the clones were any more or less human than the guardians. I understand that while they are technically different in that they were created in a lab I am referring to the ongoing argument this semester about what makes us human. We have seen that the lines are not as clearly defined as one originally may have thought. Once it was seen that despite being clones they were exhibiting more human behaviors than anything else the experiment should have stopped. Many experiments fail for one reason or another and this was no exception.
I also agree with the memoir style to engange the readers because it causes a sympathy feeling towards these “clones or creatures.” Looking back in time when I was a teenager, I can recall that all student students were required to develop an entrepreneur business project that doesn’t exist in order to graduate from high school. I disagree with these school requirements because some students were not creative or were too young to develop these business ideas. Some students were excited to show their skills on these projects. Also, some students were very upset because they were not able to develop a creative business project. These are the same feelings that the clones experienced. The excitement to be recognized for something, or sadness for not being recognized.
I can say that Madam and Emily are humans who don’t feel sympathy for the students. All humans beings are different and have different moral values. We have a good side and bad side. Sometimes we are born with it. Sometimes we acquire it through the years. On the other hand, Kathy, Tom and Ruth were humans as them, but they were inocents because they didn’t experience life outside their world.
The autobiographical memoir style worked well because it allowed the readers to get into the actual mind of Kathy. By being locked into one mind unlike in perhaps a third person narrative, the readers slowly get invested in the character development of Kathy, and how she changes throughout the story.
Kathy, the clones, Madame and Miss Emily all seem human, not sure that anyone of them can be “more” human than the others. They all show emotions and morals, and while Kathy and the clones might seem to be the “good” ones in this story maybe Madame grew up with a different upbringing and she is doing what she does because of this.
The structure also allows a “slow reveal” of how truly terrible “normal” is for Kathy; the readers share her experience of knowing and not knowing. In some ways it makes me think back on the narrative structure of Caleb Williams, in which the constant denial of normality was made so jarring by Caleb’s narration and process of discovery.
1. It is difficult to relate my life to that of Kathy, Ruth and Tommy’s. Hailsham is pretty much a boarding school, and I never attended boarding school, or even lived at school (like dorms in a college). I guess I can relate to Tommy in the way that I often became angry as a child, and didn’t excel at sports very much.
2. I think Kathy and the clones seemed more human-like than Miss Emily and Madame because we were reading the novel through the viewpoint of of a clone. We could understand that Kathy did, in fact have emotions, and the way Miss Emily and Madame spoke to the children of Hailsham felt a little un-human. This is probably because they knew the children were not actually humans, so it made their interactions a little wary.
3. I agree with Macdonald about the novel being written as an autobiography. I think the only other way I can imagine this story being told is by a third person narrative: someone who is not defined as human or a clone, and is simply writing about what they see over the years, taking special interest in Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth.
Do you agree with Macdonald that an autobiographical memoir style was a good way to present the novel Let Me Go? What other genre/style would be effective?
I do think that this autobiographical memoir style was a really good way to present this novel. Autobiographies capture most peoples attention because all the emotions they feel, we sometimes feel. As were reading this alot of people including myself can often relate to some points. The clones, Madame, Miss Emily, and Kathy all were diferent. Personality wise, but it could be based on how they were raised. Their moral views are proably different from one another, and may sweem like one is more human whether or not its true,
Life experiences that I can relate to these characters are the high school life. During this time adolescence was working which caused love relationships. these affairs sometimes brought competition amongst us and hatred at some other times. Just like Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, there are some situations in childhood that people just accept and move on.
2) I think that Kathy and the clones posses attributes that make them more human like than Madame and Miss Emily. Towards the end of “Never let me go,” Kathy is denied of deferral by Madame and Miss Emily, although she and Tommy shared intimate feelings with one another. I believe that this alone suggests how inhuman Miss Emily and Madame actually are. During there time at Halisham, they were constantly instilled to display humanity to the outside world, however the actions of their mentors displayed a contradiction. The couple was denied of their right to love, which in my opinion is significant human characteristic.
3) I agree with Macdonald’s theory. Reading this novel, I definitely sense an autobiographical narrative. Although the story is fictional, we get to experience the life of Kathy and Tommy and Ruth during different stages in their lives. Much detail is provided on their opinions, thought and actions, which does give the story somewhat of an autobiographical feel.
I do agree an autobiographical memoir style was a good way to present the novel, because it can make you feel the truly feeling when you read the book and bring you into the story even the specific character in the novel, the life experience that I can related is also my high school life.
I think in a way I can relate to Kathy, Tommy and Ruth based on how they were curious about things they didn’t know about and how excited they get when they get objects from the originals. When they got things like pencil cases, they were so excited and happy that they had something that belonged to them. When I was little, I used to get so excited when I got a new toy or new clothes, so in a way its kind of similar. Also with the three of them questioning their society and rules and being curious about rumors they hear, its similar to being in high school and hearing rumors and trying to figure out if they are true or not.