The Meaning of the Work

SPOILER ALERT! The end of the book reveals a lot about the novel, and it would be impossible to properly discuss the meaning of the book without at least some discussion of how it ends. The mystery is what makes the novel great, so if you are planning on reading it (which I recommend you do) don't read this post yet. Fair warning!

Throughout the first three-fourths of the book, I was lost as to what the themes of the story are. It appeared as though Kathy was just telling us a story about her childhood! However, after finishing the gut-wrenching ending to the novel and processing it for a few days, I have come to understand that the book ambitiously tackles some major ideas about life itself.

As I mentioned earlier, for the majority of the book Kathy focuses on telling us about her childhood and past. She lives through her fond memories from Hailsham and the Cottages. These memories are what gets her through her loneliness, and when she is driving alone she sees “things that will remind [her] of Hailsham. [She] might pass the corner of a misty field, or see part of a large house in the distance as [she comes] down the side of a valley, even a particular arrangement of poplar trees up on a hillside, and [she’ll] think: "Maybe that's it! I've found it! This actually is Hailsham!" (6). Even after it’s been over two decades since Kathy left Hailsham, she feels significant grief over the closing of the school. Hailsham is what connects her to her old friends, and when she meets one of these friends from her school days she says, “when we finally mentioned the closing of Hailsham, that suddenly brought us close again, and we hugged, quite spontaneously, not so much to comfort one another, but as a way of affirming Hailsham, the fact that it was still there in both of our memories” (193). Memories can bring us closer together to not only those who we have lost but also those who are still with us and share those memories with us.

I think that Ishiguro is trying to show how important our childhood and our memories can become. They are very powerful, and they can stay with us for a long time after the event- as Kathy once says “The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading” (165). Even once people and places are out of your lives, the memory of them can shape you for many years later. In this way, Never Let Me Go is a little similar to Song of Solomon in that both novels tackle how important the past is to shaping us into who we are today.

The idea of memories outlasting events and people ties to another theme of the passage of time. Kathy tells her life story in a series of flashbacks, and it all seems to go by so fast. She and her friends go from being young and naive at Hailsham, to the Cottages, and then become carers and donors. Tommy describes trying to hold on to things as time passes like a river washing around you. He says, “I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end, it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart... in the end, we can't stay together forever” (282). No one can stop the passage of time. No matter how hard they hold on to someone or how badly they want it to slow down, time keeps moving. Ishiguro is making this comment in this novel by showing us how quickly time passes for his characters and that they are not able to save even the things they love most from time.

Even though time goes by so fast and Kath and her friends know their lives are short, they are very passive and merely go through the motions. The main characters in the novel all conform to what they are supposed to do, and they do not question. They believe and are told that “your life must run the course that's been set for it” (266). There are no clone uprisings and no questioning why they do not have the same rights as 'normal' people or why they have to do art, they merely go out into society and calmly do what they are told to do. Kathy at one point says that “something in [her] just gave up” (179).

Part of this passivity is because the characters do not really want to face their situation head-on. If they think too much about what is going to happen to them, they will not live as happy lives as they do in the novel. At the end of the book, Miss Emily explains to Kath and Tommy why she does not tell them about what their lives were going to be like when they are young. She tells them

Sometimes that meant we kept things from you, lied to you. Yes, in many ways we fooled you, I suppose you could even call it that. But we sheltered you during those years, and we gave you your childhoods... You wouldn’t be who you are today if we’d not protected you. You wouldn’t have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn’t have lost yourselves in your art and your writing. Why should you have done, knowing what lay in store for each of you? You would have told us it was all pointless, and how could we have argued with you? (245)

Although it is true that being ignorant and conforming may make for a more simple, calm life, the flip side to this is that nothing ever gets changed if people do not acknowledge and ask about problems.

Even if Kathy and her friends were not going to take drastic measures and try to escape or rebel, if they had better acknowledged their futures they would have been nicer to each other and made more of the time that they had while they could.  Kathy nails this idea by saying, “If we’d understood that back then––who knows?––maybe we’d have kept a tighter hold of one another” (197).

Sometimes it is easier to be ignorant. We do not want to face the fact that we are going to die or that millions have detrimental diseases that cannot be cured. Noticing every little bad thing in the world would make us all miserable- you have to ignore some of it and carry on. What I took away from reading the book is that there is a fine line between being too ignorant and hyper-focusing on all that is wrong in society and your life. As Miss Lucy, a Guardian at Hailsham perfectly puts it, “If you’re to live decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you” (81). We should come to terms without own death and evaluate how we are making every moment count without becoming dragged down by thinking of all the problems in life. It is in this way that these ideas are largely relevant to our world today, even if we are not clones.