Text Review-Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is a unique dystopian science fiction novel that harmoniously blends nightmarish medical advances into a mundane coming of age story. Scientists figured out that they could extend people’s lifespans if they cloned them in order to produce healthy organs which could be harvested once the person became ill. This wonderful life prolonging medical technology had a dark side to it, however. They weren’t just cloning organs, but rather complete humans who were destined to live on the fringes of society until their clones needed their organs. When their organs were needed, the clones would have them harvested one by one until they died. The book follows Kathy H., the narrator, one of these clones who has become a “carer”. She takes care of other clones as they slowly die due to having their organs removed. Eventually she will also undergo that process. She reflects on her childhood and adolescence growing up in a place called Hailsham, where the clones were raised in isolation from the rest of the world. Their existence is controversial, some believe they shouldn’t even be educated. They exist as subalterns, people who are not seen as people. People who do not have rights and cannot participate in holding any sort of power. The children grapple with this as they grow up and learn more about their identity. At one point Kathy and her friends go and visit a small city where they search for someone who looks like one of them, in other words someone who might have been where they got their DNA from. They saw their clones lives as their own potential lives, if they were allowed the right to live normal happy lives. As they grew older, they understood more about their roles as citizens of an unseen class. Ultimately, they could not escape that injustice, despite their efforts to prove themselves as human to people who also did not have the power to change the system. The reader must question at what cost are we willing to “advance” society? Can we live in an advanced society that depends upon the exploitation of others? Read Never Let Me Go for a captivating sci-fi journey through Ruth’s life and see what other questions about power, identity, and justice arise.

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