Kazuo Ishiguro does an excellent job in explaining the conditions of Hailsham in his book Never Let Me Go, and it is only through Kathy’s life experience and curiosity that a reader might get a sense of what Hailsham really is about. Kathy frequently brings up Hailsham through-out the whole book, and the reader gets the sense that Hailsham played an integral role in the future of her and her classmates’ lives. The memories, although sometimes good and bad, cannot be fathomed by most people as being comfortable or even humane. It is, ultimately, the thought of what lies behind the existence of Hailsham that really startles its readers into realizing the full extent of the emptiness and doom that lies within Hailsham. In the beginning of the story, Hailsham could be perceived as a strict boarding school. However, any modern school is generally thought out to prepare its students for their future careers. Hailsham was the complete opposite of a modern school, because it prepared the students for a life of painful organ donations followed by a painful death. (Ishiguro 81,82)
Hailsham is a school that establishes different programs for the children that may seem natural and harmless, but the motivation behind them is shocking. The Gallery is one program that deceives the children into something it is not. Although the book does not share how all the children felt about the Gallery, it does tell us that Tommy, even as an adult, innocently thought that the purpose behind the Gallery was to allow the children to “reveal their inner selves” (Ishiguro 260). Miss Emily’s response to him that was that they had to create the Gallery “to prove you had souls at all” (Ishiguro 260)
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...in the shadows” (Ishiguro 264,265).
Miss Emily sums it up best when she repeatedly refers to Tommy and Kathy as “poor creatures” (Ishiguro 272). Miss Emily’s words unveil the ugly truth behind Hailsham. The students were, in fact, treated like creatures through-out their whole life experience at Hailsham. They were told that they “would give donations“, when in fact, they should have been told that their vital organs would be brutally ripped out of their bodies until their body couldn‘t handle it, and then they would die (Ishiguro 81,82). Perhaps the real truth lies with the last four letters in the name of the school, “sham”, which should send anybody the message that the school could be a lie.
Works Cited
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. Toronto, Canada: Vintage Canada, a division of
Random House of Canada Limited, 2010. Print.
Setting expatiates the theme of loss of innocence. For example, the four major characters in this story are sixteen and seventeen years old, which is the age when teenagers prepare to end their childhood and become adults. Also, the Devon school, where the story takes place, is a place where boys make the transition to full adulthood, and so this setting shows more clearly the boys' own growth. Finally, World War II, which in 1942 is raging in Europe, forces these teenage boys to grow up fast; during their seventeenth year they must evaluate everything that the war means to them and decide whether to take an active ...
Mount De Sales Academy is one of those Catholic, all girls’ schools that teaches their students to be good Catholics and all that. In the 1940s, however, there was one girl who didn’t listen to all the rules and became pregnant. For the time, this was a terrible situation and the girl didn’t know what to do. She lived at the school on the top floor and eventually committed suicide instead of facing the trouble she would have been in. Ever since then, there have been reports in the school of doors opening and closing with no possible explanation and silhouettes seen in the windows when there should be no one at the school.
The schoolhouse was hardly selected, the windows were broken, the floor and wall filthy, the plaster falling off, and the scholars unnotified of my arrival.
A main factor in the storyline is the way the writer portrays society's attitude to poverty in the 18th century. The poor people were treated tremendously different to higher classed people. A lot of people were even living on the streets. For example, "He picked his way through the hordes of homeless children who congregated at evening, like the starlings, to look for the most sheltered niche into which they could huddle for the night." The writer uses immense detail to help the reader visualise the scene. She also uses a simile to help the reader compare the circumstances in which the children are in. This shows that the poor children had to live on the streets and fend for themselves during the 18th century. Another example involves a brief description of the city in which the poor people lived in. This is "nor when he smelt the stench of open sewers and foraging pigs, and the manure of horses and mules" This gives a clear example of the state of the city. It is unclean and rancid and the writer includes this whilst keeping to her fictional storyline.
The windowless room symbolizes the almost perfect Eadith identity; living in this identity, s/he feels safe and that is why s/he likes the room. The children represent h/er other identities; being forced to hide under Eadith identity, they feel uncomfortable and that is why they insist on getting out of there. This is the problem of fragmented identity.
In chapter five, “Changes and Ceremonies”, the school holds their annual operetta. It was ironic that this year they would be preforming The Pied Piper. It is a story about town children that are lured away from their homes by a magician. During the rehearsals for the play, the students are "freed by the operetta from the routine of our lives, remembering the classroom where Mr. McKenna kept busy with spelling bees and mental arithmetic those not chosen, as someplace sad and dim, left behind, we were all Miss Farris' allies now" (Munro, 124). I could really relate to this part because each day for me is a routine. I drive to school, walk the same halls, sit in a classroom with the same four walls, see the same people, and go home. On weekends is the only time where I am freed from the routine. Throughout this chapter, we see a different side of Del. Del grows a crush on a boy in her class and this is the first time in the book that Del has had sexual feelings towards someone. At the end of the chapter, four or five years later, Miss Farris, the director of the play, commits suicide by drowning herself in a river. The reader may recall Miss Farris' stressful yell at the operetta rehearsal: "I might as well leap off the Town Hall! I might as well leap now! Are you are prepared to take the responsibility?" (Munro, 127). I thought it was ironic how Miss Farris said that during the play, and ends up committing suicide at the end of the chapter.
People have been unsatisfied with their lives and they want change. Their lives are filled with imperfection. They realize that their lives could be improved if everything around them and themselves were cleanse of the disadvantageous aspect of life. In the case of Brave New World the Controllers came into power sometime after the Nine Years’ War began. They had a “campaign against the Past” after the war where any remnants of the former way of living were destroyed. They considered that the past contained too much imperfection so they had to destroy museums and impede publication of certain books to shield the people from the harm of imperfection. The revolutionaries of that time wanted a new life for the people on Earth where all the adverse elements of life were removed. They desired perfection. A perfection similar to the perfect drug they created, soma, which has “All the advantages of Christianity…; none of their defects.” This drug embodies perfection because it only benefits the user without any maladaptation. And they hated and were discomforted by anything related to the past or anything less than perfect. An example of the displeasure of the imperfect past would be when the students became extremely distressed at the Director’s mention of the concept of fatherhood and motherhood. Their disdain for the past is also delineated through the Controller’s reminder to the students of how they revere the quote of Henry Ford: “History is bunk.” As the Controller reflected upon the old family life of his ancestors he recognizes it as having “appalling dangers” that Freud made a revelation of. He thought by the presences of fathers and mothers in the world is parallel to a world “full of misery…” and “full of madness and suicide...
In the begin of the book it is kinda of a slow start. Then about chapter “12” it says that there is a curse in the school. A school girl had decided to commit suicide by hanging herself. When this secret got revealed many different things started happening to the students. For example many of the football team players got injured all at the same time. But later on in the book you learn that there is a
"Open Letter To Kansas School Board." Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Nov 2010. .
Life at Lowood is extremely harsh, the pupils are very often given inedible meals, horrific clothing, and extremely cold conditions. It is through miss Temple and Helen that Jane receives her first taste of love and acceptance.
Living in a world where they have successfully created human clones for organ donations, is not a great achievement to mankind in any way, shape, or form. It makes you wonder, where exactly do you draw the line between the advancement of technology and the dehumanization that occurs because of it?" Never Let Me Go is a Novel based in the main character Kathy’s memories of her experience in Hailsham and after she left. Hailsham is a boarding school for children who have been cloned from people considered as low life’s or unsuccessful, the only purpose given too these children are for them to develop into adults and donate as many of their mature organs as they can till they die, or as the students and guardians refer to it “complete”. The author focuses on the sick ways of our current society and warns us about the possible future that may be introduced and excepted, Kazuo Ishiguro writes with the intent of teaching and affecting the reader on an emotional level at the same time.
When denied by his creator he seeks revenge and kills everyone Frankenstein cares about. In Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go people are cloned and the clones are sent to live at Hailsham, a boarding school for clones. When the clones reach the age of about twenty-five they are taken to donate their organs. When all of their organs have been removed or they die they have completed. Two of the children at Hailsham-tommy and Katie- fall in love; they final realize that they are meant to be when tommy is almost completed. They both end up completing and later on the program is shut down. Ishiguro and Shelley force the reader to contemplate the negatives of scientific progressions. Although Shelley and Ishiguro present some similar ideas, their stories are too different to be considered the same. Most in literary culture view Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go as a contemporary interpretation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, although both authors’ works deal with similar concepts the differences between the creators and
She explains how her son was just pushed through school. “Our youngest, a world-class charmer, did litter to develop his intellectual talent but always got by” (559). He got through school by being a good kid, he was quiet and didn’t get in trouble. This was how he made it to his senior year until Mrs. Stifter’s English class. Her son sat in the back of the room talking to his friends; and when Mary told her to just move him “believing the embarrassment would get him to settle down” (559) Mrs. Stifter just told her “I don’t move seniors I flunk them” (559). This opened Mary’s eyes that her son would have to actually apply himself to pass. He wouldn’t be handed a passing grade. After the meeting with her son teacher, she told her son if you don’t try you will fail, making him actually apply himself. This made Mary understand that Failure is a form of positive teaching tool. Only because her son had to work for it and, now he actually came out of high school with a form of
When Jane is at at Lowood, Miss Temple is constantly showing her genuine kindness for the students. A big moment of her kindness is when the girls did not want to eat the burnt porridge that was given to them one morning and so she ordered a lunch with cheese and bread to be served to them for lunch. Mr. Brocklehurst did not like this act done by Miss Temple, and she probably knew that it would be frowned upon but knew it was the right thin...
Firstly, the title “The School “followed by a light beginning where the author mentions the planting of trees, being responsible and considerate gives readers an