Topic > Interconnecting Past, Present, and Future in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go

Ishiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go addresses questions about past, present, and future ethics and morals surrounding technological advances and, in particular , the cloning of human beings. Using the memory of a thirty-one year old named Kathy, the narrative is used to show the inevitability of loss in a preparatory school for human clones. Ideas are presented and remembered throughout the novel, exploring the passage of time in a progressing world. Never Let Me Go is an emotional journey about recalling childhood memories, experiencing unfulfilled dreams, and reconnecting with the past to understand Hailsham's purpose, allowing readers to reflect on the ethics of humanity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro shows the passage of time and the importance of memory through Kathy's nostalgia. The story is set in the dystopian world of late 1990s England. Society is run by citizens whose lives are extended by cloned organs. The clones grow up in special institutions, far from the lives of citizens. The “donors” receive care from chosen “companions”. Companions are clones who have not yet begun the donation process, which typically begins when they are young adults. The story opens with a thirty-one-year-old caregiver named Kathy who has almost reached “completion,” which is a euphemism for death following the donation of three or four organs. Kathy "attends" Hailsham, a special institution for clones, although neither the cloning nor the donation are explained at the beginning of the novel. The story is almost entirely told as a memoir of her own, with Kathy spending a considerable amount of time reminiscing about her time in Hailsham. He says: “I remember we were in Juniors, begging the guardians to have the next lesson in the pavilion instead of the usual room,” fondly recalling his time there. Each of the three main characters: Kathy, Tommy and Ruth are studied as their emotional journey unfolds, allowing readers to follow three different personalities to help convey different ideas and perspectives. The novel is divided into three parts of Kathy's life; her childhood in Hailsham, the Cottages and her time as a carer. Kathy's narrative is personal and thoughtful, allowing readers to follow her story as if it were being told directly to them. Keeping the suspense alive, Ishiguro uses Kathy as a means of information, foreshadowing a dark and sad future. Kathy's narrative is constantly changing, contributing to Kathy's already disorganized perception of time and is shaping her memory of thought. Sometimes claiming not to remember certain events clearly, readers see the connection between past and present as blurred. Ishiguro uses this technique to convey the fact that intentional weight cloning leads to the interpretation of ethics for both clones and humans. It's almost as if he's giving the audience so much information to avoid what he doesn't say: the atrocities and terror of reality for the clones. Kathy's character is personal and realistic with her narration providing readers with a complex thought process to follow as she tells the story. Kathy's narration shapes not only the plot but the construction of important themes such as the passage of time. As the story continues, readers know very little about Kathy's present life. This is because looking back nostalgically is Kathy's only comfort mechanism. “There have been times over the years when I have tried to leave Hailsham behind; when I amsaid I shouldn't have looked back so much. But then there came a point where I stopped resisting." Kathy finds it comforting to remember her past in Hailsham, realizing that there is nothing wrong with feeling nostalgic about it, despite its current failure to function on the basis of human ethics, but then again, readers rarely hear about of his life in the present. All the people he cared about are dead, so he is remembering the time he spent with Tommy and Ruth, keeping them alive in his memory and as characters relevant to the story. Being a clone, Kathy has a limited amount of time. Probably because of this, Kathy has little time to think about her future and make plans because her future is more of a dream than a reality. Kathy uses the past as a safe haven to fondly remember those she loves and what she has experienced, keeping it in her memory so that it is never taken away from her like that of her physical body. By the time Kathy reaches her thirties, she has lost everything and everyone who mattered to her. Her loneliness has become the only companion she has left, saying: "Sometimes I'm so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly meet someone I know, it's a bit of a shock and it takes me a while to adjust." . Nostalgia is all Kathy has left; everything that now exists for her is a precious memory linked to her past. Kathy withholds some information, creating a buildup toward her unrealized dream of a "deferral," a possible program believed to buy couples in love more time together if souls could be determined. through creative tasks at Hailsham. This creates persistent stress and tension for readers, manipulating Kathy's desires with dreams. Escaping into daydreaming, she says, “I didn't like being distracted from my daydreams.” Kathy's daydreams and inability to see are currently attributed to her time as a caregiver and, furthermore, to her inability to face her fate. The concept of death is referred to only as "completion", failing to face one's destiny or that of death itself. In “The Deliverance of Others” by David Palumbo-Liu, the nature of human organization as it serves operationally for everyday humans is discussed. “The will to operationalize the human being and his various actions in the world have the aim of realizing something, of bringing something into existence, of changing the world and the human being in it.” Here Palumbo Liu states of humanity that “we are human in the way we act in the world, we transform the world for our purposes, we make it 'us,' and the manifestation of such actions occurs through institutions and discourses.” Hailsham's institutions and discourses, as seen in Never Let Me Go, shape characters to "codify and rationalize" thinking and the process of understanding, so as to form the nature that is human organization. Kathy cannot resist the hope of a life together with Ruth and Tommy, revealing her human reaction to death as fear and an inability to face her tragic fate. The traces of which can be traced back to the second part of the novel, in which he talks about the days spent at the cottages with his friends. “In fact, listening to her, I even started to wonder if maybe it was all possible: if one day we could all move to a place like that and carry on our lives together” shows Kathy's hopes and shattered dreams realized. Conflicted with a love triangle between her and Tommy, Kathy recalls him saying, "The fantasy never got beyond that, I didn't let it." Kathy has lost her lover and close friend, having developed a psychological barrier to.