Never Let me Go and Identity

Essay on NEVER LET ME GO by Kazuo Ishiguro and the concept of individual freedom.

Essay Quote : “You were brought into this world for a purpose, and your future, all of them, have been decided.”

Essay Question : How does Ishiguro present the concept of individual freedom in the novel?

Individual Freedom is the ability to think for yourself and be independent of yourself (being able to do what you please without any restraining you or holding you down) and to act on  your own virtues and beliefs. The concept of Individual Freedom in “Never Let Me Go” is very important especially with the conflict of what the clones want and what they are expected to do. In this essay we will look at the three parts of the novel to discover how Ishiguro presents this concept in the novel.

Ishiguro first blurs this line in the first part of the novel as he presents to the reader Hailsham and its inhabitants.

The reader ,while reading the first few chapters, isn’t aware of the fate of the students, and the students are all shown as being “free” and having their own personalities and desires.

Ishiguro uses a lot of descriptions to show the different personalities of the characters (for exemple how Ruth is constantly described as overbearing and a natural leader compared to the calm Kathy). The reader is led to believe that the students are normal kids. After all they all have normal childlike behaviour. Although it is shown that the way they live in particular as they don’t see family and stay inside Hailsham all year. Their belongings are also bought alone and even created by them for example the Judy Bridgewater cassette owned by Kathy.

These belongings and creative expression make them able to live a “normal life”, which is why Kathy holds on to the cassette, she will never be able to have a child but it makes her feel the motherly love that she might have experienced if she had a baby. And also why Tommy was pressured into being creative even though he just wasn't.

The students are isolated from the outside world and only know what they are taught by the guardians with no other sources and they are heavily tested to evaluate their medical condition “You’ve been told about it. 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.”.

All of this makes the reader think, at first, that it’s to protect the students. When in fact this confinement serves a different purpose; keeping them intact for when they will donate their organs, which is inevitable. Ishiguro uses Miss Lucy, a guardian at Hailsham, to first break the “Illusion”, Miss Lucy shows great frustration in the ignorance of the students about their own fate. Because she knows that whatever they want to do or how much they want it, they will never be able to be anything else but a walking organ machine “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”, “You’re not like the actors you watch on your videos, you’re not even like me. You were brought into this world for a purpose, and your future, all of them, have been decided.”.

In the second part of the novel, the students are sent to the Cottages. At the cottages the students get to experience the “adult life”, they are given more “freedom”, which completely shocks the Hailsham students who are used to its protectiveness (“Of course, in practice, especially during the first months, we rarely stepped beyond the confines of the Cottages. We didn't even walk about the surrounding countryside or wander into the nearby villages”). But they get used to it and even come to enjoy it “ If you’d told me then that within a year, I'd not only develop a habit of taking long solitary walks, but that I’d start learning to drive a car, I’d have thought you were mad.” Inside the Cottages, the topic of their “future” is also very present. Sometimes the clones stay up to talk about their “dream future”. We know this is very important to them because they still try to hold onto that hypothetical freedom.

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