Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go:Childhood Memories and Nostalgia
130354 Hiromi SUZUKI
Introduction
Kazuo Ishiguro wrote the futuristic yet nostalgic dystopian novel, Never Let Me
Go in 2005. Ishiguro has won international acclaim and honors with his highly regarded
novels, and he is considered to be one of the most remarkable contemporary fiction
writers in both English-speaking and non-English-speaking countries. He is also
renowned as a postmodern writer and his favorite writing style, the first-person
narrative.
His first novel, A Pale View of Hills received the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prizeof the Royal Society of Literature in 1982. It was his brilliant debut in the literary world.
In the same year, Ishiguro was selected as part of Twenty Best of Young British
Novelists national promotion. Four years later in 1986, his second novel, An Artist of
the Floating World received the Whitbread Book of the Year Award which is equallyprestigious as The Man Booker Prize1. It was his third novel, The Remains of the Day(1989), which made him an honorable Booker Prize winner and firmly established his
reputation throughout the world. The Remains of the Day was adapted to film, and thefeatured movie received eight Academy Award nominations and won three awards. He
wrote The Unconsoled, his fourth novel, in 1995 and he won the Cheltenham Prize. Inthat year, Ishiguro received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services toliterature. In 1998, he received the French Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
from the French government. In 2000, his fifth novel, When We Were Orphans was
released and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His latest novel, The Buried Giant, waspublished in 2015, and so far his work has been translated into more than forty
languages.
In this thesis, I examine Ishiguro’s sixth novel, Never Let Me Go, which is thewinner of the Italian Serono Prize and the German Corine International Book Prize andwas shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The film adaptation of Never Let Me Go was
directed by Mark Romanek and released in 2010. It received a favorable response fromfilm critics praising the excellent performances of up-and-coming young Hollywood
1

Prestigious British award given annually to a full-length novel written by a citizen of
the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.
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actors. The novel was also made into a play and television drama in Japan. The play was
directed by a leading Japanese theater director, Yukio Ninagawa, in 2014 and thetelevision show was aired in 2016.
The original story is about human clones who are meant to be donors and toprovide their vital organs to others. Many people think the genre of the novel is Science
Fiction, because the characters are human clones and they are supposed to sacrifice theirlives to keep others alive in the cruel futuristic dystopian society where the medical
technology is advanced at a rapid pace. However, my interpretation of the story is thathuman cloning is just an ostensible theme, and what Ishiguro truly wants readers to takeaway from Never Let Me Go is the significance of the precious memories of childhood.
It is the key component that makes the readers feel nostalgic as they read. I believe
childhood memories are generally very important as they shape people’s lives. Whenpeople grow up and reminisce about their childhood, they tend to realize how peacefultheir childhood environment was, and how carefully it was protected from the harmful
adult world. Eventually, people take a step out of the childhood boundary and confront
the fact that there are so many things in the real life that they cannot avoid as they growolder. Kazuo Ishiguro describes this carefully protected bubble-like innocent childhoodas Hailsham, the special boarding school, where the clone students spend their schooldays. Matthew Beedham, points out that “the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro demand thatreaders look honestly at the past, to consider what they hold valuable, and to question
how they live their lives” (4). The attitude that Kathy H, the narrator and protagonist of
the story, cherishes her youthful memories under the horrible plight of her sacrificing
her life shows the readers the importance of facing those unescapable situations andhow to fulfill their lives. All her beloved friends died by donating their vital organs,however, they still live on in Kathy’s memory.
In this thesis, Chapter One focuses on the relationship between Kazuo Ishiguro
and Japan. I attempt to deepen the understanding of his connection with Japan, and how
memories of his childhood in Japan influence his works. Chapter Two looks at
Hailsham, the idyllic place for Kathy and other clones. The chapter examines Ishiguro’s
motive for describing Hailsham as a seemingly idyllic place. Chapter Three aims tocompare Never Let Me Go with other dystopian novels and movies and see throughIshiguro’s intentions of using the topic, human clones to mask his true theme. Chapter
Four explores a better understanding of Ishiguro’s favorite writing style, the first-person
narrator. The chapter points out the fact that Kathy’s reminiscence of her past isunreliable to a certain extent, and the readers can see the things only through Kathy’s
narration. In the final chapter, I examine three cassette tapes Kathy owns, andinvestigate the importance of precious memories attached to the three tapes. The
cassette tapes themselves are just mass-copied products, however they remind Kathy of- 107 -

her happy memories with her beloved friends, Ruth and Tommy, therefore they are
valuable for Kathy. The chapter explores the important role of memories of a happy
childhood in a full life. Throughout the thesis, I take Ishiguro’s interviews into
consideration and clarify Ishiguro’s biography and its connection with his thoughts of‘childhood memories’ and ‘nostalgia’ to consider the ‘meaning of life.’ By studying
Never Let Me Go, I want to prove that the novel is not just a dystopian story and is infact a novel that reveals the importance of having happy childhood memories.

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Chapter 1: Kazuo Ishiguro: A “Japanese-born British” Novelist
Kazuo Ishiguro is considered to be one of the most honored contemporary fiction
writers in the world. He often uses first-person narrative style, and he is renowned as animportant individual in postmodern literature. Haruki Murakami, one of the mostcelebrated contemporary fiction writers, praises Ishiguro: “[…] it is a joy to be blessedwith a contemporary like Kazuo Ishiguro. […] To picture what his new novels may look
like is to picture my yet unwritten work as well” (viii). Ishiguro thinks himself as ahomeless writer, because he has experienced an identity crisis in his childhood. This
chapter explores Ishiguro’s background to examine the correlation of Never Let Me Go
and his childhood memories, when he spent his early years in Japan and the UK. The
chapter reveals the fact that Kathy’s idyllic childhood memories are connected to
Ishiguro’s childhood memories.
A lot of critics bring into question his identity and ethnicity. How could a personof Japanese origin embody true “Britishness” in his novel? Does his childhood memoryof Japan have an influence on his first two novels that are set in Japan? Barry Lewis
points out that “the interesting question about Ishiguro’s writing is not ‘Is it Japanese?’but ‘How Japanese is it?’” (20). Ishiguro’s life history seems an essential start point toanalyze his writings.
Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, in 1954, nine years after the dropping of an
atomic bomb on the city during World War II. At the age of five, he left Japan and cameto Surrey, in southern England, with his parents and his elder sister. His younger sister
was born in the UK. His father, Shizuo Ishiguro, an oceanographer, was to be employedby the British government to join a research project on the North Sea. It was supposed
to be a temporary stay at first, however, they ended up settling in the town of Guildford
for good. Ishiguro attended British grammar school in Surrey but spoke Japanese athome with his parents. Even though his parents provided him with Japanese magazines,
comic books, and puzzles to keep him caught up with the culture of his homeland, hisJapanese language ability remained at the same level when he was five years old. It was
twenty-nine years later that Ishiguro returned to Japan. In an interview with Suanne
Kelman, Ishiguro tells her his emotional motivation behind writing his first novel, A
Pale View of Hills, with his personal history:
I grew up thinking I was going to return to Japan any day. And so I had this very
powerfully imagined country in my head. And by the time I had more or less grownup, I realized that this Japan that existed in my head, and which was very important
to me, was a country that no longer existed in reality, if it ever had. I also becameaware that as the years passed this place was just fading away in my head, too. (43)- 109 -

In the interview, Ishiguro also reveals the reason why he became a writer. “I had a Japan
inside my head, which I needed to transcribe as accurately as possible” (43). When he
was twenty years old, in 1974, he traveled to the USA and Canada and hitchhiked
around the West Coast for several months. He attempted to establish himself as amusician by sending out demo tapes. According to Susannah Hunnewell, during his
travels, Ishiguro encountered people who asked him a question: “What do you think is
the meaning of life?” (37). “The meaning of life” seems to be the fundamental questionthat he has been trying to figure out in his entire career as a novelist. That same year, heattended University of Kent in Canterbury, where he studied American literature andearned his Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Philosophy with honors in 1978. He
occasionally worked with the homeless in London and met his future Glaswegian wife,
Lorna Anne MacDougall, a social worker, at a charity in Notting Hill when he worked
as a residential resettlement worker. In 1979, Ishiguro enrolled in a well-known creative
writing program at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, Norfolk, and studied with
Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter both who are acclaimed British writers. He
graduated from the course completing a Master of Arts degree in 1980. After he got the
Master degree, he became a British citizen in 1982 to become a professional ‘British’novelist.
In an interview conducted by Allan Vorda in 1990, Ishiguro says that “I think if
there is something I really struggle with as a writer, […] it is this whole question about
how to make a particular setting actually take off into the realm of metaphors so thatpeople don’t think it is just about Japan or Britain” (16, emphasis added). A Pale View
of Hills, his first book, is a story of a middle-aged Japanese woman, Etsuko, who lives
in England by herself reminiscing about her past life during a visit from her second
daughter, Niki. Etsuko thinks back to the days when she was in Japan with her firsthusband, a Japanese man named Jiro. It was shortly after the dropping of the atomic
bomb in Nagasaki. Etsuko also looks back on the time when her first daughter, Keiko,committed suicide sometime after moving to England.
Ishiguro’s second novel, An Artist of the Floating World, is set entirely inpost-World War II Japan, and is narrated by an old Japanese painter, Masuji Ono, who
had been a supporter of militarism with his propagandistic artwork in the 1930s. He wasonce an honored painter and respected by a lot of his pupils, however, the attitudes
towards him and his paintings suddenly turned cold after the end of the war. Masuji
faces the rapidly changing post-war environment, looks back on his life, and struggles
with accepting responsibility for his past actions.
“Japanese protagonists,” “Nagasaki,” “the atomic bomb,” “Ukiyo-e,” - with allthese Japanese-like themes, many of the critics tried to find some kind of connections
between Ishiguro and Japan after his first and second novels. Some critics, Brian W.
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Shaffer, for instance, even attempted to find the bond with Ishiguro and Japan
mentioning that the relationship between Sachiko and Frank from A Pale View of Hills
is associable with the story of Madame Butterfly (21). However, then Ishiguro released
his third book, The Remains of the Day that cemented his international reputation andsuccess, and he swept away all the critics’ questions about his Japaneseness.
“Greatness,” “dignity,” and “Englishness,” are the words of praise that Booker Prizewinner Salman Rushdie, a British-Indian novelist and essayist, used in a review of thebook (qtd. in Wai-chew Sim 7). The Remains of the Day is narrated by Stevens, a loyal
and perfect English butler, who looks back at his life and regrets sacrificing his personal
relationship with Miss Kenton, a former colleague, to serve his master, Lord Darlington,over a period of many years. Stevens has his own faith in Lord Darlington, a great
gentleman, however, the more he recalls his memory, the more he becomes suspiciousof the actual truth of Lord Darlington’s greatness. Ishiguro’s background of having beenborn in Nagasaki, Japan, intrigued many reviewers and made them wonder how he
could possibly complete the “great” “English” book.
Wai-chew Sim points out that because of his three novels, people considered
Ishiguro an expert in Japanese and English cultures, despite the fact that Ishiguro wasstill investigating common assumptions or misconceptions about them (9). In aninterview with Karen Grigsby Bates in 2005, Ishiguro tells his thoughts on his
nationality:[…] I consider myself British I suppose, because, you know, I’ve grown up and I’ve
been shaped by Britain. I’ve been educated entirely in Britain. But, on the other hand,when I was growing up, I grew up in this home with Japanese parents, speaking
Japanese. Perhaps most crucially- yes- in this home where my parents didn’t havethe attitude of immigrants but of visitors- temporary visitors- the idea was that we’dalways go back within the next two years. And so, I think perhaps, I did grow up
observing the English around me at a slight distance, and many things that myfriends thought were absolute right and wrongs, that they’d been taught by theirparents, I realize that they were just tribal customs, because that’s how my parents
regarded them. […] There were all these things to do with good manners andprotocol that were very important. And, of course, these things were very different
within our house. So, I was always taught to respect the English manners and mores,
but they were very much what the natives did. And something like the English classsystem was something that I felt I was on the outside of, whereas all my friends grewup very, very concerned about class. Because their parents were, whereas my own
parents couldn’t even interpret the class signals. […] It was like a cold civil war
going on in the country between the classes, and I was kind of on the outside of it.
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(200)
As cited above, Ishiguro is not just a British of Japanese parentage. Even though hedepicted ‘Japan’ in his first two novels, the ‘Japan’ was something he had pictured in hishead with recalling his memories of when he had been in Japan. His ‘Japan’ was his
memory and his imagination. It is misguided to see him as a specialist of Japaneseculture. In an interview with Allan Vorda and Kim Herzinger, Ishiguro mentions the
new literary movement in the UK:[…] there was a whole generation of younger British writers who often had racial
backgrounds that were not the typical white Anglo-Saxson. Even some of thestraight English writers were also using settings or themes that tended to beinternational or historical. So there definitely was this atmosphere where people
were looking for this young, exotic […] writer with an international flavor. (69)
He took advantage of his Japanese origin to be a success as a novelist in the UK. The
British paid great attention to Ishiguro because of his foreign name and his novels thatare set in foreign places. Furthermore the ‘great’ ‘Britishness’ in his third novel is his
imagination as well. In the same interview, he revealed the context of The Remains of
the Day. “[…] I’ve tried to create a mythical England. Sometimes it looks like or has
the tone of a very English book, but actually I’m using that as a kind of shock tactic of
this relatively young person with a Japanese name and a Japanese face who produces
this extra English novel […]. It’s more English than English” (73 emphasis in theoriginal). Even though he has been living entirely in Britain and thinks of himself as
British, there is this distance that he feels he does not completely blend into the British
community. He examined the British society at a distance as a “temporary visitor” andcreated his imagined, mystic English country in The Remains of the Day.
He created his own worlds based on his memories and imagination. He has
experienced living in two different countries, but that is the very reason why he could
complete his imagined worlds. He aims to write his novels not only for the readers inJapan or Britain, but also for the readers all over the world. Unlike Ishiguro’s first andsecond novels, Never Let Me Go does not possess any Japanese aspect, however, I
believe that Kathy’s idyllic childhood memory is something connected to Ishiguro’s
childhood memories of Japan. In the story, the clones share the idea of “possibles,”which means the models of the clones. “[…] each of us was copied at some point from anormal person […] ‘possibles’- the people who might have been the models for you andyour friends” (137). Why the clones’ parents are called “possibles,” not models nor
originals? This is because they imagine their possible future life if they would have been
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born as a normal human being. Mark Currie states that “the idea of the ‘possible’ for the
students is a living vision of the future” (99). Kathy thinks her “possible” would be aprostitute because she suffers from sexual desires. Her best friend Ruth dreams ofworking in a nice open-plan office and Kathy, Ruth, Tommy, and two of their seniors,
Chrissie and Rodney went to a day trip to find her “possible.” My theory is that the ideaof “possibles” is related to the possible life that Ishiguro might have lived if he had
stayed entirely in Japan. Just like Kathy, Ruth and other clones, Ishiguro has imagined
his possible life living in Japan as a normal Japanese person. In fact, Ishiguro told Maya
Jaggi in the Guardian in 1995 that he had very strong emotional relationships withJapan, and he has always been aware that there was this other life he might have had, awhole person he was supposed to become (116). He had an image of Japan that was
based on his childhood memories. He has published novels on the theme of memories,
and there is something nostalgic about them. It can be concluded that the time he spentin Japan until five years old is significant for him to be a successful novelist.

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Chapter 2: Hailsham: Protected Childhood and Its Loss
Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy spend their childhood at a supposedly idyllic English
boarding school. The place is called “Hailsham.” Ishiguro tells in an interview thatHailsham is a metaphor for ‘childhood.’ This chapter explores Ishiguro’s intention ofdescribing Hailsham as a peaceful and special place. Ishiguro has the idea that all thechildren must be deceived and raised in a carefully protected bubble-like environment,so that they do not know any bitterness of life and spend a happy childhood. Hailsham
is closed few years after Kathy graduates, and the closure of Hailsham symbolizes a lossof innocence and a loss of her childhood.
Hailsham is an exceptional school for cloned human children. There are otherfacilities to grow cloned humans, and they are called “homes” (260). However, in those“homes,” clones have a terrible life. Miss Emily tells Kathy that “you’d not sleep fordays if you saw what still goes on in some of those places” (260). Her comment, as wellas other home-raised clones’ comments imply those “homes” breed clones just likeraising livestock. One time Kathy becomes a carer for a donor who is from a “home” inDorset, and she asks him about the place he had grown up, but his reaction reminds ofher how Hailsham is a special place:[…] his face beneath the blotches went into a completely new kind of grimace. And I
realized then how desperately he didn’t want to be reminded. Instead, he wanted tohear about Hailsham. (5)Then, Kathy thinks “how lucky we’d been – Tommy, Ruth, me, all the rest of us” (6) tohave a happy childhood in Hailsham.
Hailsham was founded with the aim of improving the clone rearing environment.
The word “hail” has a meaning to describe someone as being very healthy andprosperous, therefore, it seems a proper school name for clones. However, the word
“sham” is added and, accordingly, it gives the readers an impression that the school issomething hypocritical and deceptive.
Kathy often mentions that Hailsham students are privileged. For example, at the
beginning of the novel, she narrates that people think she is a good carer because she isfrom Hailsham, and she has an advantage:
I’m a Hailsham student – which is enough by itself sometimes to get people’s backs
up. Kathy H., they say, she gets to pick and choose, and she always chooses her own
kind: people from Hailsham, or one of the other privileged estates. No wonder she
has a great record. (3-4)- 114 -

In this scene, Kathy tells how other clones are jealous of people from Hailsham. Even
though carers usually cannot choose a donor to take care of, she becomes a carer for her
best friends, Ruth and Tommy, as she had wanted, and other people think she obtained
the satisfactory results, because she is a privileged Hailsham student.
In addition, rumors about “deferral” is proof that Hailsham students are unusual.
Deferrals are “some special arrangement” for only “Hailsham students” to “defer their
donations” if two people are “truly in love” (173). The rumor is later denied by Miss
Emily; however, clones believe that the deferral is only for the special Hailsham
students. The quotation below is from the scene when Chrissie and Rodney talk about
the rumor they heard:
We heard something else, something about Hailsham students. What they were
saying was that some Hailsham students in the past, in special circumstances, hadmanaged to get a deferral. That this was something you could do if you were a
Hailsham student. You could ask for your donations to be put back by three, evenfour years. (150 emphasis added)
Chrissie and Rodney are a pair of lovers from “homes,” and in the story, from Kathy’s
narration, the readers can only imagine what kind of childhood they have. Even so, it isobvious that they are jealous of people from Hailsham, because they think Hailsham
students are privileged.
Unlike other clones in “homes” that are raised in deplorable conditions all over
the UK, Hailsham students receive a good education from teachers called “guardians.”
The “guardians” encourage the students’ artwork such as paintings, poems, andsculptures. On the other hand, clones in “homes” are just raised physically to bevaluable donors and they do not have any opportunity to receive education. In addition,
Hailsham students learn how to be better humans, not to be better donors, thus, they
spend their childhood peacefully.
If the story was narrated from a clone who grows up in a “home,” the narrative
would be completely different. What does Hailsham symbolize? Kazuo Ishiguro talks
about Hailsham in an interview with Karen Grigsby Bates in 2005:
I think most childhoods are like that. Most childhoods should be like that. Certainly,
when my daughter was younger, I tried to keep her in a bubble, sealed off from therealities of the world that actually awaited her. Even though, physically, we took her
everywhere. It struck me how quickly even total strangers would enter into thisconspiracy with myself and my wife to keep her in this bubble. Everybody wanted
to censor out the sadness of the world. They deliberately wanted this little child to- 115 -

be deceived about how nice a place the world was. (199 emphasis added)
Ishiguro dedicates Never Let Me Go to his wife and daughter. He writes “To Lorna andNaomi” at the beginning of the novel. It is obvious that he gets this idea of an ideal
childhood through the experience of raising his daughter.
What is more, Ishiguro’s childhood memories might greatly affect his idea that all
children must be deceived and carefully protected in the “bubble.” As mentioned in
Chapter One, Ishiguro has experienced moving from Japan to the UK at the age of five.
One can easily imagine how hard and uneasy for a five-year old little child to move to acompletely different new place. His parents must have done everything they could torelieve his stress of his new environment. They might even have lied to him to let him
spend a peaceful innocent childhood. Ishiguro tells “[…] in order to have a proper
childhood, an element of deception must be used” (218) in an interview with Cynthia F.
Wong and Grace Crummett in 2006. In the interview, Ishiguro also reveals his thought
about clones in Hailsham and their childhood:
If they had known they would die in the way they do, would they have embraced
this arts education? They might say, “What’s the point? Why are we making all thiseffort?” […] “Would we make any effort to be decent human beings?” […] To makethis childhood work, you have to deceive them into believing it’s all worthwhile.
[…] As parents, we put an enormous amount of energy into protecting our children,
getting them optimistic and confident, and getting them to think hard not just about
their schoolwork but about the emotional labyrinth of getting along with their peers
and their elders. Maybe you can only do that effectively by slightly lying to the child.
(218 emphasis added)
Therefore, the special school for clones, Hailsham, is a metaphor for childhood that isbased on “sham” (deception and lie). All the Hailsham students are carefully protectedin the bubble-like innocent environment from the outside, real world, and deceived by
the guardians so that they can spend a peaceful childhood until the time they face thetruth that they must die young to donate their vital organs. The process the Hailsham
students realize the reality is similar to the one we experience. We spend our childhood
simply and innocently without knowing any difficulties about life, but as we grow up, alife becomes more and more complicated, because we gradually learn the dark side oflife. Growing up is like taking a step forward from a shelter, and Ishiguro describes the
shelter as Hailsham.
Even though the Hailsham students are secluded in an isolated facility from therest of the world, they have a moment to sense that something horrible awaits them
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outside Hailsham. “The woods” is a good example. The students are very afraid of “thewoods” because “there were all kinds of horrible stories about the woods” (50).
The woods were at the top of the hill that rose behind Hailsham House. All we could
see really was a dark fringe of trees, but I certainly wasn’t the only one of my age tofeel their presence day and night. When it got bad, it was like they cast a shadow
over the whole of Hailsham; all you had to do was turn your head or move towards awindow and there they’d be, looming in the distance. Safest was the front of themain house, because you couldn’t see them from any of the windows. Even so, younever really got away from them. […] The woods played on our imaginations themost after dark, in our dorms as we were trying to fall asleep. You almost thoughtthen you could hear the wind rustling the branches, and talking about it seemed toonly make things worse. (49-50)“The woods” are, as it were, a boundary between Hailsham, the peaceful and innocent
childhood, and outside, the real merciless world, where donation awaits the clone
children. The fact the Hailsham students are afraid of “the woods” actually means thatthey have a fear of becoming adults.
There are so many things in a real life that people understand when they grow up,
however, sometimes they are better off not knowing them. Every so often we will behappier if we remain ignorant. The process that Kathy and others graduate from
Hailsham and become a carer in the world out there makes us assimilate ourselves to thereality of growing older. Ishiguro’s intention of describing Hailsham as a peaceful andspecial place is to suggest his thoughts about ideal childhood. He thinks all the children
must be raised in an innocent place like Hailsham so that they can have a happy
memory of their childhood. We constantly feel nostalgia as we read the novel because
Hailsham is a symbol of innocent childhood.

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Chapter 3: Comparison with Other Dystopian Stories
In this chapter, I aim to explore Ishiguro’s purpose of using the topic: humancloning. Comparing Never Let Me Go with other dystopian novels and movies makes it
possible to examine his intention to deal with clones as just a setting in the novel. I
investigate the way Ishiguro describes the clone technology and the dystopian society in
Never Let Me Go, and reveal the true theme that he wants to picture in the novel. The
novel confronts its readers with questions about the meaning of life.
Never Let Me Go belongs to the genre of a dystopian science novel. In an
alternative Britain and in an alternative 1990s, tragically, cloned human beings are
created with the sole purpose of donating their vital organs. They are recognized as“shadowy objects in test tubes” (256) and people do their best not to think about theexistence of clones and convince themselves they are less than fully humans. Cloning is
a common subject in dystopian novels: a notable example is Aldous Huxley’s Brave
New World (1932), an anti-utopian world in which a totalitarian government controls
society by the use of science and technology, such as reproductive technology,
sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning. Also, Lois
Lowry’s The Giver (1993), a representative work of dystopian writing for children andyoung adults, deals with human cloning. In the story of The Giver, a main character,
Jonas, lives in an idyllic community where war, conflict, imbalance, unfairness,
unemployment, and divorce do not exist at all. Everyone is the same with no choice of
their partners and jobs.
Dystopia is “an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad,typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one2.” Dystopia is diametrically
opposite to utopia. In a dystopian society, life is extremely unpleasant, and unfairness orimmorality prevail. A lot of critics compare Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go with otherdystopian novels and movies. For example, Mark Fisher notes that “Pre-existing
shortages provide the pretext for deliberately depriving the subjugated class: of time,
their organs, their lives” (27), mentioning In Time, written by Andrew Niccol, Never Let
Me Go, and the most sensational dystopian novel in recent years, The Hunger Games,
written by Suzanne Collins. Fisher states that in these three recent dystopian worlds,“class and precariousness are forced into the foreground” (27).
Wai-chew Sim makes a comparison between Never Let Me Go and a thrilling
Hollywood movie, The Island, directed by Michael Bay “to appreciate the nature of thestylistic innovations introduced by Ishiguro, and also the way he uses them to highlightcertain key thematic concerns” (78-79). The Island is very similar to the story of Never
Let Me Go: in the near future, there is a huge business for wealthy individuals to make2

Oxford Dictionary of English Second Edition Revised, Oxford University Press, 2005.
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their clones for the purpose of harvesting their body parts in case they get disease or inan accident. In the story, The Island, the main character is a man named Lincoln Six
Echo, who is born and raised in an isolated facility. The facility is the only place left in
the world where human beings are protected against the polluted environment except
the place called the Island, a paradisiacal place. Everyone in the facility dreams to win alottery, the prize of which is to move to the Island, and one day, Lincoln’s best friend,
Jordan Two Delta wins the lottery and he blesses her good fortune. However, Lincoln
fortuitously ascertains the frightening truth behind the award: the dwellers are all clones,
and people who win the lottery and move out to the Island will actually have an
operation to remove their replacement organs and parts. Wai-chew Sim emphasizes thedifferent actions done by two human clones in two similar stories, Lincoln and Kathy,
after they realize the fact that they are born to donate their organs. He points out that themain theme of The Island is escaping and resistance of human clones against authority,
but in Never Let Me Go, clones never try to rebel against the social system that exploits
them (79). Lincoln tries to escape from the facility with Jordan and rebels against theoutside authority of “the real” human’s world. He kills his ‘original’ to protect himself,
fights against government and succeeds in releasing all the clones from the closed
facility to the outside. On the other hand, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy from Never Let Me
Go never try to escape, and they think donating their organs is their natural duty.
Ishiguro does not describe Never Let Me Go as a story of human clones against the realhumans. It is more likely a story of clones accepting their destiny and trying to fulfill
their lives in a limited time.
Even though Never Let Me Go is about human clones, the novel does not possess
any element of science fiction. John M. Harrison notes that “there is no science here”(26) pointing out the novel’s lack of scientific background description. Wai-chew Sim
also states that “cloning technology is kept off-stage […]. Science is arguably pushed tothe background in this novel” (83). By comparing the novel with the classical dystopian
science fiction, Brave New World, the novel’s non-scientific feature is all the morestriking. Huxley’s Brave New World, opens its pages with detailed information about“Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre,” which makes “the World State’smotto, Community, Identity, Stability” (21) possible. Unlike Ishiguro’s Never Let Me
Go, it thoroughly explains about the dystopian society and its use of the cloning
technology. It seems human clones are just an ostensible theme in Never Let Me Go
compared to Brave New World.
As mentioned previously, human clones in Never Let Me Go accept their fate, andIshiguro does not give us any specific aspect of science technology in the novel. Thus, it
may cause a disconnect among the readers who regard the novel as SF story and expect
the clones to strive against their destiny. However, there is a possibility that Ishiguro- 119 -

created a new type of dystopian society in the novel. In the story, Kathy and otherhuman clones have a happy childhood in Hailsham, and the innocent childhood
memories help them to face the donation without doubting the donation system andrebelling against the society. Nevertheless, it may be because the ‘real’ humans in thesociety deliberately raise the clones in that way. In other words, the human clones in
Hailsham are raised not to be rebellious against the society and educated to think theirdestiny (donation) is just a natural duty to carry out. Then, it could be a true dystopia,
where the state completely controls the clones and their mind as well.
According to the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), dystopian
society “is an illusion of a perfect utopian world.” For example, in Brave New World,
the people in the society have easy and pleasant lives. The worries of life such as aging,social classes, conception control, both physical and mental pains do not bother people
because they are encouraged to take Soma, a tranquillizer, to indulge in quick and easy
pleasure. What makes the world dystopia is the fact that nobody in fact has any freedom
because of the strict control by the totalitarian state. In case of Never Let Me Go, it is amerciless world for clones to end their brief lives by donating their organs, however,seeing the story from a different perspective makes the society a seemingly perfectplace. For the ‘real humans’ (non-clones), there is no worry about the shortage of organs
for transplantation. The medical technology is very advanced, and the progressive
cloning technology releases people from the fear of organ failure unto death. At the endof the story, Miss Emily tells Kathy and Tommy the circumstances in the outside world:
How can you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable, how can you
ask such a world to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days? There was nogoing back. However uncomfortable people were about your existence, theiroverwhelming concern was that their own children, their spouses, their parents, theirfriends, did not die from cancer, motor neurone disease, heart disease. (257-258)
From a reader’s perspective, for Kathy and other cloned humans, this world seems to bea ruthless dystopia, where the state rears and controls them for the sole purpose of organtransplant. However, for people outside Hailsham, it is apparently an idealized society,where fatal diseases are no longer incurable thanks to the cloning technology. They do
not need to be anxious about losing their loved family and friends because of lack oforgan transplants.
Another characteristic of a dystopian society defined by NCTE is that “Citizens
have a fear of the outside world.” In Never Let Me Go, the ‘real’ humans are afraid ofclones, because they regard clones as outsiders who do not belong to their society. The
feature is well explained by a scene when Madame meets Kathy and other students at- 120 -

Hailsham. Madame is “a tall, narrow woman with short hair,” (32) and she works hard
to manage Hailsham with Miss Emily. Madame visits Hailsham several times a year to
select students’ best art work. Later the truth comes out: Madame chooses the children’s
art works because she puts them on exhibit at Gallery to prove to people outside that thecloned students have “souls” (255). Miss Emily and Madame think artwork reveal
people’s souls. The Hailsham students think of her as “snooty” (32), but Ruth thinks she
is scared of the clone children. So, Kathy, Ruth and some of their friends decide to carryout a plan to test Ruth’s theory. The plan is that they “swarm out” (34) all around
Madame to see if she is scared of them. Madame’s reaction far exceeds their
expectations:[…] she just froze and waited for us to pass by. She didn’t shriek, or even let out agasp. […] I glanced quickly at her face – as did the others, I’m sure. And I can stillsee it now, the shudder she seemed to be suppressing, the real dread that one of us
would accidentally brush against her. And though we just kept on walking, we all
felt it; it was like we’d walked from the sun light into chilly shade. Ruth had beenright: Madame was afraid of us. (35 emphasis in the original)
It is this scene that reveals the feature of a dystopian society that people from the ‘real’
human community have a fear for the clones. Even though Madame is an earnest
activist to claim cloned humans’ right to receive a good educational environment andchildhood, she cannot help feeling afraid of them. Her co-manager, Miss Emily is also
scared of her cloned students. She talks to Kathy as follows:
Is she (Madame) afraid of you? We’re all afraid of you. I myself had to fight backmy dread of you all almost every day I was at Hailsham. There were times I’d lookdown at you all from my study window and I’d feel such revulsion… (264 emphasisin the original)
A lot of critics point out the novel’s lack of scientific information, and it isfrustrating for the readers that the cloned humans do not run away from the ruthlessreality that awaits them. There is a possibility that the human clones in Hailsham arebrainwashed into believing that giving their vital organs and dying are just normalthings for them, so that the clones do not resist the socirty. However, Ishiguro’s true
intention of using the topic, human cloning, is not describing rebellion against society.
What Ishiguro truly tries to paint in words is the meaning of life. By setting thecharacters as cloned humans, Ishiguro lets the readers think of the futility of clones’
lives and in fact, we unconsciously consider the futility of our own. The human clones- 121 -

in the novel spend an ordinary human life, thus, it is like a mirror of our own lives. The
novel really works for us to consider how we can fulfill our lives just like Kathy, Ruth
and Tommy with limited time.

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Chapter 4: Kathy’s Narration
Never Let Me Go is written in the first person like many other Ishiguro’s novels.
In this chapter, I will explore Kathy’s unreliable narration to examine the fact that her
recollection of memories is uncertain. Kathy always narrates her tragic fate in a positive
way, and she tends to consider her destiny optimistically. She cherishes her childhood
memories and feels nostalgic as she recalls them. The way she recollect her childhood
memories reveals the importance of having innocent childhood.
It is a cliché that first-person narrative of memories is mostly unreliable. A
first-person narrator could lie about his/her stories to hide a fact, to hold back his/hertrue feelings with regret, and to conceal a mistake with shame. Another feature of thefirst-person narrative is that readers never thoroughly grasp the situation due to the lackof the context. Readers can only understand the story through a first-person narrator’s
voice. Moreover, when a first-person storyteller recalls his/her memories, doubts about
the story increase because there is a gap between narrated time and the time of thenarration. According to Mark Currie, “Memory failure is a familiar source of
unreliability in the first-person narrative voice, and Kathy’s constant references toprevious difficulties of recollection can be thought of as a subspecies of this kind of
unreliability” (95). John Mullan, also states that “There have been many novels thathave made the uncertainties of memory part of the texture of a first-person narration,
but none where memory has quite the significance that it does for Ishiguro’s narrator”(110). The story of Never Let Me Go is narrated only through Kathy’s voice that isbased on her vague recollection of memories. Here, this is one of the interesting featuresof memories: ‘uncertainty.’
Memories are conflicting timewise. Kathy’s reminiscences of her memories areoften quite unreliable. John Mullan refers to Kathy’s narration and expresses that“memory is uncertain, disputable, haggled over” (109). Kathy tells us:
Tommy and I discussed the tokens controversy a few years ago, and we couldn’t
agree when it had happened. I said we’d been ten at the time; he thought it was later,
but in the end came round to agreeing with me. I’m pretty sure I got it right: we werein Junior 4 - a while after that incident with Madame, but still three years before ourtalk by the pond” (38 emphasis added).
As quoted above, Kathy does not recall her memory in chronological order, and thetense of the events is confusing. Besides, the recollection shows a possibility that Kathy
tells a wrong story since Tommy at first disagreed with her. Another good example ofKathy’s unreliable story telling is the following: “When Ruth and I discussed it while I
was caring for her down in Dover, she claimed it had been just a matter of two or three- 123 -

weeks - but that was almost certainly wrong” (49 emphasis added). In this situation,
Kathy denies Ruth’s opinion, and she is sure that her memory is correct. However, if
Ruth told the story of Never Let Me Go, it would be a completely different story as
Kathy told.
Interestingly, Kathy admits that she is also suspicious about the accuracy of her
own narration. Kathy tells us, for instance, “This was all a long time ago so I might
have some of it wrong […]” (13). As mentioned above, Kathy is an unreliable narrator,
thus readers must be wary of her narration and read the context only. Our understanding
is pretty much limited, and we can know only the things that Kathy provides. We haveto guess what Kathy does not know. The readers have no clue to find answers toquestions such as “How this clone system was established?” “Who create cloned
humans and how?,” and “Why they do not run away and hide?.” There is a possibility
that there might be hundreds of thousands cloned humans actually rebel against thesystem behind the story, however, Kathy never mentions the resistance of clones. That is
why we never know what really happens in the story’s society.
Another feature of Kathy’s first-person narrative is that her audience is only otherclones, and she does not talk about people living outside. Kathy discusses “carers,” whotake care of donors. “Carers” are also cloned humans and eventually become donors.
The following are examples of the fact that Kathy’s imagined listeners are only otherclones:I know carers, working now, who are just as good and don’t get half the credit. If
you’re one of them, I can understand how you might get resentful - about my bedsit,
my car, […] (3). I don’t know if you had ‘collections’ where you were (38). I don’tknow how it was where you were, but at Hailsham we had to have some form of
medical almost every week (13 emphases added).
As emphasized above, she tells the story to her imagined listener, you, who are just likeherself. John Mullan states that Kathy assumes her audiences are human clones, who arereared for donation, and the fact suggests that the clones have a limited connection withthe real humans outside (107). Speaking of the non-clones (the real humans), theHailsham students actually have an opportunity to contact with people from outside
only when “a Sale” is held once every month. “The Sales” are important to clone
students at Hailsham, because that is where they get hold of items from outside such as
clothes, toys, and music cassettes. A big white van comes to bring the items fromoutside the world, and the Hailsham students talk to men unloading the van:[…] the two men in overalls carrying the big cardboard boxes, […] ‘A lot of goodies,- 124 -

sweetheart,’ was the usual reply. Then if you kept asking: ‘But is it a bumper crop?’
they’d sooner or later smile and say: ‘Oh, I’d say so, sweetheart. A real bumper
crop,’ bringing a thrilled cheer. (41-42 emphasis in the original)
It is this scene, the readers realize cynical connotation that the little Hailsham children
cannot understand. The delivery men joke and laugh with the clone students and callthem “sweetheart.” From the innocent perspective of clone children, “sweetheart”
means just as same as ‘darling’ and ‘dear.’ Also, the children are curious if the boxes arefull of items from outside and very excited to know they are literally “bumper crop.”
However, from the perspective of the men, they see the clones as “sweet” “heart,”
which means people outside, like the two men, see the clones as ‘organs,’ and it is arelief for them if there is no shortage of clones, just like “bumper crop.” The two men
are ordinary people on the outside, thus, they know that the cruel fate awaits thechildren. Kathy is a very good storyteller who makes the readers (her imagined
listeners) perceive the real situations a little earlier than the cloned students notice.
Kathy lives in the late 1990s in England, but the time Kathy exists is when thecloning technology is much more advanced than the time we live. Therefore, the novel
possesses a sense of double structure: the past and the future. Mark Currie named it “akind of timelessness” (93). He states that “There is, on one hand, a sense of the future,
which inheres in the novel’s interest in cloning; and on the other hand a sense of the past,in the form of a kind of public school memoir, or a recollection of a childhood
apparently isolated from the forces of history” (93). Kathy tells us her innocent
childhood memories, and consequently we feel nostalgic as we trace her recollections.
At the same time, we think it is a futuristic novel which describing cloned humans. Her
childhood is just like the one the ordinary childhood that the readers might have. She
spends her school days with her friends and experiences a lot of things with two of her
best friends, Ruth and Tommy. They sometimes argue, lie, and become jealous of eachother. The three children overcome many troubles together and share common secrets.
Kathy has romantic feelings for Tommy but he has a relationship with Ruth. They gothrough a love triangle. Wojciech Drag notes that Never Let Me Go follows a traditionof boarding school books, and it emphasizes on “friendship, romance, fascination withteachers and an ongoing competition for popularity through individual achievement”(166-167). Many of us experience similar things as we grow up, and that is why we asreaders feel like we recall our own memories when we read Kathy’s recollection.
As aforementioned, there is a similarity between Kathy’s childhood and ours, andit makes us feel nostalgic. However, some of Kathy’s expressions sound a little odd tous. For instance, the Hailsham students have a medical checkup every week. Why dothey have to check their condition so often? The reason is because they need to be- 125 -

healthy to donate their organs. This every week medical checkup creates side effectwhere the clones are abnormally sensitive about their health condition. One time when
Tommy gashed his elbow, he is very worried and asks Kathy for help to keep his arm
straight. “We should never take chances with our health” (84). His confession is a proof
that the guardians often advise their students to be careful about their physical condition.
In addition, the guardians at Hailsham frequently tell their students about the terrible
effects of smoking to make them anti-smokers; “[…] the guardians were really strict
about smoking. I’m sure they’d have preferred it if we never found out smoking evenexisted” (67). Miss Lucy, one of the guardians, is asked a question by one of her
students if she had herself ever had a cigarette and answered:[…] to be honest, I did smoke for a little while. […] It’s not good that I smoked. It
wasn’t good for me so I stopped it. But what you must understand is that for you, allof you, it’s much, much, worse to smoke than it ever was for me. […] You’re
students. You’re… special. So keeping yourselves well, keeping yourselves very
healthy inside, that’s much more important for each of you than it is for me. (68emphasis in the original)
Miss Lucy tells her students that they are quite different from her. Scenes like this allow
the readers to fully comprehend the sad fact that the cloned students need to be “healthy
inside” to be a useful donor in the future. The readers reflect their own childhood
memories into Kathy because she spends her school days that are so much similar to us,
however, some of these unnatural routines that Kathy has creates a realization that theclones are not quite like us. To cite another instance, when Kathy tells about sex that theclone students have, the readers might feel strange because their attitude toward sex is‘too open.’ Eventually, it reveals that all the cloned humans including Kathy are infertile.
Miss Emily, one of the guardians gives a lot of sex lectures and tells her students that:[…] the people out there were different from us students: they could have babies
from sex. That was why it was so important to them, this question of who did it withwhom. And even though, as we knew, it was completely impossible for any of us tohave babies, out there, we had to behave like them. We had to respect the rules andtreat sex as something pretty special. (82)Miss Emily also advises that “If you can’t find someone with whom you truly wish toshare this experience, then don’t!” (96 emphasis in the original). The Hailsham students
endlessly and openly discuss the topic of sex:
- 126 -

Hannah had the theory that it was their duty to make us have sex because otherwise
we wouldn’t be good donors later on. According to her, things like your kidneys andpancreas didn’t work properly unless you kept having sex. Someone else said what
we had to remember was that the guardians were ‘normals.’ That’s why they were so
odd about it; for them, sex was for when you wanted babies, and even though theyknew, intellectually, that we couldn’t have babies, they still felt uneasy about us
doing it because deep down they couldn’t quite believe we wouldn’t end up withbabies. (94-95 emphasis in the original).
The clone students have the freedom of sex, and they do not need to consider any sexual
matters, for example marriage, birth control, and adultery. Such free love is one of thetypical features of dystopian novels like Brave New World. Ishiguro follows thedystopian tradition about the concept of sexual freedom.
These odd differences, too many medical checkups, sensitive response to theirinjury and health, and sterility effectively work to make the readers slowly realize thatpeople like Kathy are different from people outside even though the students have thesimilar childhood, and gradually the readers understand the horrible fact that the cloned
children are reared for the sole purpose of donating their vital organs.
So far, the chapter explores the characteristics of Kathy’s narration, and finally,
what is the most remarkable things about Kathy’s narrative is that she is optimistic
despite her tragic fate, yet, there is no clue to show if her optimism is true or just a brave
face. At the beginning of the novel, Kathy tells us:
I won’t be a carer any more come the end of the year, and though I’ve got a lot out ofit, I have to admit I’ll welcome the chance to rest – to stop and think and remember.
I’m sure it’s at least partly to do with that, to do with preparing for the change ofpace, that I’ve been getting this urge to order all these old memories. (37)She tells us what she wants to do after she carries out her duty as a carer. She hopes tospend her time to organize her old memories when she becomes a donor. She has been acarer for over eleven years, and it is sure that she has seen her fellow human clones
suffering with pain, getting weaker and weaker and dying. She has been experiencing
many of their painful deaths. How could she be so joyful to be a “donor?” Is she
actually scared of starting donation but pretending being happy to mask her trueemotion? From her unreliable narration, there is no chance to see her real feelings. It
could be thought that she is trained not to be scared being a “donor,” or anotherpossibility is that she cannot put up with the hard job as a “carer” anymore because shelost her loved ones and wants to finish her life. Mark Currie notes that:- 127 -

For Kathy, to stop being a ‘carer’ means to start her ‘donations’, or in a lesseuphemistic language, to die a premature death. The very persistence of thiseuphemistic language supports the supposition that the truth of what happens for
Kathy at the end of the year is not being honestly apprehended, and that the horror of
realization is averted in cheerful optimism. (100)The “cheerful optimism” also appears in Kathy’s anticipation of a life as a “donor.”
Kathy says “I wouldn’t mind at all if that’s where I ended up” (17), mentioning about
Ruth’s “recovery centre,” where clones lie in bed after their “donations.” Kathy looks at
the bright side of things, for example, “the recovery rooms are small, but they’rewell-designed and comfortable,” “the centre is so clean,” and has “big glass sliding
panels” which make it possible to “see a big lot of sky” and “get all the fresh air”
(17-18). She is very grateful for the good luck of Ruth staying in the nicely equipped
centre with fine views from the window, however, she apparently does not mention
anything negative about being a donor. She tells us “by the end of the year, I won’t bedriving around like this any more” and thinks she can have “a quieter life” (281) when
she becomes a “donor.” She never gives the readers a detailed information about
donations. She avoids expressing her cruel fate precisely, and instead, she uses
euphemistic expressions to describe her future. At the very end of the story, she tells us“I […] then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be”(282). In this scene, what she says is that she is going to be a “donor” but she uses aeuphemistic language and make it sound less tragic. The euphemism is one of Kathy’s
distinguishing features of narration, and she does not consider her plight as despair.
John Mullan notes another example of Kathy’s language; “She talks proudly but
modestly of her skills in ‘caring’, like anyone talking of a job she has begun to master”(108). In addition, Kathy explains:
My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. Their recovery
times have been impressive, and hardly any of them have been classified as‘agitated’, even before fourth donation. Okay, maybe I am boasting now. But itmeans a lot to me, being able to do my work well, especially that bit about mydonors staying ‘calm.’ (3 emphasis in the original)
Kathy thinks being a good “carer” and “donor” is her mission to accomplish. She isproud of herself that she is fantastic at what she does, and she says she is ready to be a“donor.” She does not bewail her misfortune to be born as a cloned human to donate herorgans, because she has been taught she is “special” (68). She has been told that they are- 128 -

different from people outside of Hailsham, so she regards “donation” as a natural duty.
Although the readers feel it is a very sorrowful tale, Kathy is quite positive about her
tragic situation and accepts her destiny. It arises a gap between Kathy and the readers,and her positive way of thinking makes them feel more pity for her.

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Chapter 5: The Importance of Childhood Memories
In this final chapter, I examine three cassette tapes that Kathy owns and explore
the important role of happy childhood memories in a full life. In the novel, Kathy talks
about the only three ‘cassette tapes’ she ever had. All the ‘cassette tapes’ are justmass-produced ‘copies,’ however, they are truly important for Kathy for some specificreasons. Those ‘mass-copied’ cassettes are the metaphor for donors, such as Kathy andothers who are massively ‘copied.’ By mentioning how Kathy cherishes those ‘copied
tapes,’ Ishiguro tells ‘the importance of the memories.’ Even though a mass-produced
product itself has no value, if a special memory is attached to the item, then it becomes
indispensable. Thus one can easily assume that Ishiguro tells the importance of precious
memories by describing Kathy’s three cassette tapes.
The novel’s title, Never Let Me Go, actually refers to the name of a song. One day,
Kathy finds a cassette tape at the “Sale.” The tape is “Songs After Dark” (66) by Judy
Bridgewater, and the song, “Never Let Me Go,” is one of the songs in the album. (JudyBridgewater and the song are fictions that Ishiguro creates.) Kathy supposes the tape isoriginally an LP and recorded in 1956. Kathy has her favorite part of the lyrics; “Baby,baby, never let me go…” (70). What she imagines when she listens to the refrain is that:[…] a woman who’d been told she couldn’t have babies, who’d really, really wanted
them all her life. Then there’s a sort of miracle and she has a baby, and she holds thisbaby very close to her and walks around singing: ‘Baby, never let me go…’ partly
because she’s so happy, but also because she’s so afraid something will happen, thatthe baby will get ill or be taken away from her. (70)She listens to the song over and over again, whenever she has a chance. Even though it
is a love song, little Kathy interprets the song as ‘a mother and her baby’ story. She iseleven years old around that time, and it can be said that it is just normal for her to havethese kind of misinterpretations about a love song. In fact she admits that she “realized
this couldn’t be right, that this interpretation didn’t fit with the rest of the lyrics” (70).
One can assume that it is natural for eleven year old kids to confuse a word “baby” as an
infant, not a lover.
However, what she imagines about the song raises a question: why does she
picture in her head a woman “who’d been told she couldn’t have babies” (266)? This isbecause Kathy already senses around that time that none of the clone students can havebabies. Kathy interprets the song only with her knowledge. The little Kathy knows that
she is infertile and associate her with her imaginary woman in the song.
Her vision of the song relates the “bubble” that I mention in Chapter Two. As I
investigate in Chapter Two, Ishiguro thinks all the children must be deceived and their- 130 -

environment must be like a “bubble” where it is protected from the harmful facts thatawait them. The way Hailsham students learn those truths is matter-of-fact, part of theirgeneral education, as normal as learning a subject like math or English. Whenever theylearn something, for example, donations and their infertility, they think they alreadyknow. There is no surprise nor shock for them. The “guardians” hint to the students
those facts indirectly. One of the “guardians” Miss Lucy thinks the clone students “havebeen told and not told.” (79) Thus Miss Lucy is frustrated by the way Hailsham avoids
letting the students face the fact and prepare for the donations. One day, she follows herheart and tells the students something they are not supposed to know at that stage:
None of you will go to America, none of you will be film stars. And none of you will
be working in supermarkets as I heard some of you planning the other day. Your
lives are set out for you. You’ll become adults, then before you’re old, before you’reeven middle-aged, you’ll start to donate your vital organs. That’s what each of you
was created to do. You’re not like the actors you watch on your videos, you’re noteven like me. You were brought into this world for a purpose, and your futures, all ofthem, have been decided. […] You’ll be leaving Hailsham before long, and it’s not
so far off, the day you’ll be preparing for your first donations. […] If you’re to havedecent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one ofyou. (80)Miss Lucy tells the students the reality, because she believes it is better for them toknow what awaits them in the future after they graduate from Hailsham. Her
educational policy does not match with the Hailsham teaching method, so she ends up
leaving the school. Presumably, Ishiguro describes Miss Lucy as a stranger who breaks
into the carefully protected “bubble” and makes the children face the harsh reality. Also
the result of Miss Lucy’s dismissal reflects Ishiguro’s view on childhood environment.
Ishiguro thinks people like Miss Lucy who try to break into the innocent childhood
territory and tell the children that they are deceived and world out there, there are somany harsh realities must be excluded. Ishiguro thinks that children need to spend their
young age in a peaceful environment, and then their happy childhood memories work as
a mental pabulum when they grow up and face life.
Kathy holds happy childhood memories of Hailsham, and therefore she canendure her loss of her beloved friends. In her peaceful childhood memories, Ruth andTommy are there. By recalling her memories, Kathy always feels their existence nearher. That is the very reason why having a happy childhood memories is significant. In
contrast to Kathy, there is a dying donor who possesses no happy childhood memories
appearing in the story. The donor repeatedly begs Kathy to tell him her happy memories- 131 -

of Hailsham. Kathy tells us about him as follows:
What he wanted was not just to hear about Hailsham, but to remember Hailsham,just like it had been his own childhood. He knew he was close to completing and sothat’s what he was doing: getting me to describe things to him, so they’d really sinkin, so that maybe during those sleepless nights, with the drugs and the pain and theexhaustion, the line would blur between what were my memories and what were his.
(5 emphasis in the original)
The man grows up in another facility and does not have any happy memories aboutchildhood, thus he wants to borrow peaceful Hailsham memories from Kathy and“remember” them as his own. Robert C Abrams points out that “If you do not have goodmemories on which to reflect as you die, you must invent or borrow them” (42).
Incorporation is one of the interesting characteristics of memory.
Considering the song, “Never Let Me Go,” a strange thing happens to Kathy one
day. Kathy plays the song in her usual way when nobody is around. She sings anddances slowly and softly every time the lines come around “Oh baby, baby, never let mego…” (71 emphasis in the original). Kathy holds a pillow in her arms and likens thepillow to the baby. Then she realizes that Madame stares, sobbing, at her in the doorway.
Soon Madame turns and leaves the room, but she leaves Kathy with feeling of
awkwardness. Why does Madame cry at that moment when she sees Kathy dancing andholding a pillow that stands for a baby to the rhythm of the song? Is it because she
thinks it was really tragic how Kathy cannot have babies? The truth is revealed byMadame herself when Kathy and Tommy visit her to get a “deferral.” Kathy asks
Madame about the strange incident, and why she sobbed when she saw Kathy at thatmoment. Madame replies as in the following:
I was weeping for an altogether different reason. When I watched you dancing thatday, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific,
efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world.
And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kindworld, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it andpleading, never to let her go. (266-267)
It is this scene that the readers feel nostalgia for the old childhood memories. The
surface meaning of what Madame says might be taken as a warning on too advanced
science technology, however, by investigating the meaning of “the old kind world” that“she knew in her heart could not remain,” we can see Ishiguro’s message that everyone- 132 -

must have recollections of their childhood and never let them go. Immersing yourself innostalgic recollection is something really important as you grow up and pause, take amoment, and think about the situation that you are in. Childhood memories work tocompare yourself with who you used to be, and that is why having happy childhood
memories is essential.
Another one of three cassette tapes that Kathy cherishes is a gift from Ruth.
Kathy loses the tape of Never Let Me Go a couple of months after the strange incident
with Madame, and she is really disappointed. Then a fortnight later Ruth gives Kathy
the tape as a replacement to cheer her up. It is called “Twenty Classic Dance Tunes” (75).
The tape is orchestra music for ballroom dancing, and it is far different from the one
Kathy loses; however, Kathy greatly appreciates Ruth’s kindness. Ruth shows her
feelings toward Kathy through giving her the cassette tape. Even though Ruth knows
little of music, she senses her best friend’s disappointment of losing her favorite tapeand tries to make her feel better with the substitute tape. Kathy recalls her memory with
Ruth and tells us about the tape:[…] I felt the disappointment ebbing away and being replaced by a real happiness.
[…] I squeezed one of her hands in both mine when I thanked her. She said: ‘I found
it at the last Sale. I just thought it’s the sort of thing you’d like.’ And I said that, yes,
it was exactly the sort of thing. I still have it now. I don’t play it much because themusic has nothing to do with anything. It’s an object, like a brooch or a ring, andespecially now Ruth has gone, it’s become one of my most precious possessions.
(75)
As Kathy mentions in the citation above, the tape itself is not really special, and it is justa mass-copied merchandise. However, Kathy values the tape that Ruth gives her
because she treasures the ‘memory’ of Ruth that is attached to the tape. She finds avalue in the mass-produced cassette tape because it reminds her of a happy and precious‘memory’ of the childhood she spent with Ruth.
The third cassette tape that Kathy owns is something related to Tommy. Kathy
and Tommy find the cassette tape when they explore around “Norfolk.” Kathy and otherHailsham students believe that “Norfolk” is where the lost property is kept. They thinkthat “Norfolk” is England’s lost corner where all the lost property found in the country
ends up. The Hailsham students have the idea from Miss Emily’s geography class. One
day Miss Emily teaches the students the different counties of England. She explains that
“Norfolk” is stuck out on the east and on the hump jutting into the sea, therefore it islike a ‘lost corner’ (65). Since Hailsham has a lost corner to keep the students’ lost
property, students make the kind of joke.
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For the reason of ‘the lost corner of England’ theory, Kathy and Tommy decide to
go searching for Kathy’s lost tape of “Never Let Me Go.” They explore around Norfolk,
looking for Kathy’s tape half-jokingly and half for fun. They look in second-hand storesand spend a really good time together. Kathy recalls her memory of the Norfolk trip andtells the readers:
I had to really hold myself back from giggling stupidly, or jumping up and down on
the pavement like a little kid. […] That moment when we decided to go searchingfor my lost tape, it was like suddenly every cloud had blown away, and we had
nothing but fun and laughter before us. (169)
Kathy really enjoys spending time with Tommy in Norfolk. For Kathy, the purpose offinding her lost tape is not important. She is joyful because she spends her time with
Tommy, her best and beloved friend. Kathy says “I think Judy Bridgewater had more orless slipped from our minds. We were just enjoying looking through all those things
together” (169).
At last Kathy finds the cassette, Judy Bridgewater’s Songs After Dark in one of
the secondhand stores. However, she is not excited about it and even tries to pretend
never to have seen it, because she wishes this fun trip with Tommy would last longer.
Certainly, Kathy explains “I was still feeling a pang of regret that we’d found it soquickly” (171). It is not sure if the cassette tape Kathy and Tommy find in Norfolk is theone that Kathy lost in Hailsham, however Kathy cherishes the tape very much, because
it reminds her of how amazing the time she spent with Tommy was. The following is
Kathy’s recollection of the tape:
I really appreciated having the tape – and that song – back again. Even then, it was
mainly a nostalgia thing, and today, if I happen to get the tape out and look at it, it
brings back memories of that afternoon in Norfolk every bit as much as it does ourHailsham days. (171)The happy memory is attached to the tape, even though the tape itself is just one of the
mass-copied products. When Tommy asks Kathy if it is the actual one she lost, Kathy
answers: “For all I know, it might be. […] But I have to tell you, Tommy, there might bethousands of these knocking about” (170).
In my interpretation, what the three cassette tapes I mention imply is thesignificance of memories. All the three cassette tapes are massively copied from original
music. They are just mass produced tapes, however they all remind Kathy of her
innocent happy childhood memories. The first cassette tape is the one Kathy likes to- 134 -

listen to whenever she has a chance and enjoys immersing herself in her fantasy. One of
the songs on the tape, “Never Let Me Go,” is her favorite tune, and it reminds her of her
pure childhood in Hailsham. The second tape is the one Ruth gives Kathy as a gift. Ruth
tries to find Kathy’s lost tape, but she cannot find it, so she gets a replacement tape tomake Kathy feel better. The tape itself is not like the music of the original tape, however
Kathy is full of gratitude to Ruth and she cherishes the tape as a keepsake of Ruth. The
tape reminds Kathy of sweet memories of Ruth. The third tape is the one Kathy andTommy find in Norfolk, and it brings Kathy the pleasant memory of him.
What I interpret is that all the three mass-copied cassette tapes are the metaphor
for Kathy, Ruth, Tommy, and other mass-copied clones. By adding the values ofmemories to the three cassette tapes, Ishiguro suggests that fond memories makeimmaterial things special and unique. Therefore the readers can receive the message ofthe significance of happy memories from the novel. Matthew Beedham points out aninteresting fact that the covers of almost all the other editions of Never Let Me Go,
which are sold throughout the world feature a young woman, however the cover of theJapanese version of the novel is an image of a cassette tape the same size as the book(142-143). The Japanese version of the cover indeed shows the importance of the threecassette tapes Kathy owns and actually the significance of the memories attached tothose tapes.
The cassette tapes that are mass-produced have an interesting analogy to theclones that are duplicated by reproductive technology. However irreplaceable precious
memories are attached to the tapes, and therefore those tapes become the one and only.

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Conclusion
Overall this thesis explored the importance of having innocent and happy
childhood memories. In Chapter One, I considered Kazuo Ishiguro’s personal history.
He was born and raised in Nagasaki, Japan and moved to the UK at the age of five. The
chapter revealed how his childhood in Japan and the UK helped to shape his identity.
Chapter Two explored “Hailsham” as a metaphor for an ideal childhood environment.
The Chapter exposed Ishiguro’s message that all children must be raised in an idyllic,
happy, innocent, and protected environment. It also revealed that Ishiguro described
Hailsham as a bubble-like environment where children are isolated from the realities
outside. In Chapter Three, I compared Never Let Me Go with other dystopian stories.
Human clones in Never Let Me Go do not fight against their destiny like othertraditional dystopian novels. Instead they accept their fate, even though their lives areshort and donation awaits them, by having a happy childhood; they fulfill their lives
with fond memories. Chapter Four explored Kathy’s unreliable narration. Kathy
recollects vague memories of her childhood. Even though she experiences her beloved
friends’ deaths and donation awaits her in the near future, she tends to be optimistic
about her situation. One cannot deny the possibility that her narration is not true.
However, by considering how she cherishes her innocent childhood memories, it reveals
the importance of having a happy childhood. The final Chapter focused on the only
three cassette tapes Kathy ever has. The first tape is Kathy’s favorite, and she listens tothe song over and over. It brings back Kathy’s innocent childhood memories which she
uses to immerse herself in her fantasy. The second one is Ruth’s gift for Kathy. Even
though Kathy does not like any of the songs, she cherishes the tape, because it reminds
her of happy childhood memories with Ruth. The last one is the one Kathy finds with
Tommy when they spend time together. It also reminds her of the joyful memories that
she makes with Tommy. All the three cassette tapes themselves are mass-copied
products and do not possess any value. However, by adding the precious memories,
Kathy finds value in the three of them.
Kathy faces donations, and she eventually confronts premature death, however,
she recollects her precious childhood memories and accepts her destiny. She embraces
her fate without resistance against society, because she has a satisfactory childhood, andshe feels nostalgic for her happy childhood days. Outside the story people do not face
donations, however, they confront struggles and hardships in life. Recollecting their
happy childhood memories allows them to escape these realities and immersethemselves in nostalgia for a short time. Even though Kathy loses her beloved friends,
Ruth and Tommy, she can feel their existence in her memories. Kathy asserts at the endof the story: “I’ll have Hailsham with me, safely in my head, and that’ll be something
no one can take away” (281). She is supposed to donate her vital organs, and she loses- 136 -

her body parts in the near future, however, she believes her precious childhood
memories of Hailsham and her friends will never be taken away, because they are her
own possessions.
Kazuo Ishiguro symbolizes Hailsham as a carefully protected, bubble-like,
innocent childhood environment. Kathy and via her perspective, other clone students
who grow up in Hailsham share the happy memories. We must use deception to protect
the children, so that they can have an innocent childhood. Creating the memories of a
happy and innocent childhood gives people the power to face reality when they growup.

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