English
Analysis of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishuguro's novel, Never Let Me Go, brings us to a fictional England in the late 90s, where the disciplines of medicine and the bioengineering have developed to a degree that today's scientists could only dream of. Kathy, the narrator, matures throughout the book, going from a student, to a young lady finding her place in the world to embracing her fate and taking upon the role of a carer. From the beginning of the narrative, we are given the impression of her being a common, somewhat bewildered, but orderly teenage student: she doesn't rebel or think about escaping. Her seemingly linear and routine-filled life changes as the reader gets to know the Hailsham students and their role as clones, created for the purpose of first becoming carers and then donors. Kathy's method of storytelling provides the reader with an eerie, but touching guide through this nightmarish scenario.
Throughout the novel Kathy tells us her story in a first person point of view, while glancing over her past, skipping between timeframes and events. A notable element of Ishiguro's construction of Kathy, as a narrator, is her memory loss and unpredictable mood, which often gives the reader the experience of prodding through some living creature's thoughts: "I crept away along the path, and for the next day or so kept dreading what Miss Emily would say when she saw me. But she never mentioned it at all. But that's not really what I want to talk about just now. What I want to do now is get a few things down about Ruthâ¦" The time jumping, her unsteady mood and her memory loss create a puzzle, a sense of confusion, which lends itself to...