Never Let Me Go Section 2: Narration/Point of View

One of the most intriguing aspects of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is Ishiguro’s choice in having the story told from Kathy’s point of view as she looks back and reflects of the past events of her life. To begin with, the fact that Kathy is recalling all the events of the story while offering slight glimpses at her current circumstances immediately and automatically produces a certain amount of foreshadowing which builds a sense of suspense in the reader. However, beyond this, the unique narration of the novel offers a number of insights into the essence of the story. For example, Kathy commonly uses the phrase, “I don’t know how it was where you were…” which implies a few essential things. First of all, the reader is lead to question who the “you” is which Kathy is addressing. Is the audience of her recollections intended to be one of the patients for which she is caring? Or perhaps she is addressing the community of clones at large? Furthermore, it is important for the reader to note that, by using the phrase, “I don’t know how it was where you were, but at Hailsham…” throughout the novel, Kathy implies that several institutions were in existence which housed and educated clones just like at Hailsham. These further leads the reader to question how many clones were supposedly in existence in the novel, since Kathy has yet to specify any ballpark number of students even at Hailsham alone.

The most important aspect of Kathy’s narration, however, is that is makes the story much more personable. The topic which Ishiguro focused Never Let Me Go on is certainly very controversial: the idea that clones could be made of human beings, raised and educated leading more or less perfectly normal lives, and then slowly murdered via donation of vital organs for the sake of others as though they were not human beings at all. While this idea has never been put into practice in today’s world, something along these lines could in fact be very possible in the near future given today’s incredible medical technology. Had Ishiguro not chosen to tell this story for the point of view of a clone herself, the story could have taken a much more objective approach, and the idea of raising clones for the sake of saving the lives of others may not have been portrayed in such a gruesome light. Rather, objectively speaking, a reader might even find the idea of producing clones in order to harvest their organs for the sake of others to be a good idea. However, the moment that the reader begins to see this idea through the eyes of a clone, the idea immediately transforms into a gruesome, torturous, and unjustifiably horrible act. Hearing Kathy talk about the theory of “possibles” and explain that, “Since each of us was copied at some point from a normal person, there must be, for each of us, somewhere out there, a model getting on with his or her life” (Ishiguro, 139) is almost eerie in nature. The fact that Kathy explains this fact to the reader so matter-of-factly and nonchalantly is almost striking. Having Kathy narrate the story almost forces the reader to picture what their own life would be like if they knew that they had been created as the exact model of another “normal” human being just for the purpose of giving their own organs to help others live. In this context, the idea of cloning becomes absolutely repulsive. Therefore, I believe that Ishiguro intentionally chose to have a character as likeable as Kathy narrate the story as a literary technique to bring attention to one of the overarching themes of the novel, the inhumane way in which many people are already treated in today’s world and the dangers of mistreatment of others in the future.