Never Let Me Go follows Kathy, now a 31 year old carer becoming a donor at the end of the year, as she explores and revisits her memories through her retrospective narration. Despite following and complying with the brutal, inhumane system in this dystopian world, Kathy and her friends from Hailsham do show signs of rebellion, although they all end up succumbing to the devastating fates the world has set them up for. lt;/p>
There is a strong sense of acceptance throughout the novel, where readers can often feel frustrated and hopeless by the lack of defiance the students show, or the countless missed opportunities they could have taken to guarantee their freedom and pave the path for a happier ending in this dystopian world. During the course of growing up at Hailsham, the students continue to avoid important questions surrounding their futures, disliking feeling ‘uncomfortable’, ‘awkward’ and ‘confused’, and as a result attempt to ignore the pressing questions around their futures and their lives. This in turn complies with the very concealed nature of information-giving at Hailsham, and the students are left with accepting that they know little about their futures. As a result of the lack of keen interest to uncover what is ahead of them, this strong sense of acceptance contributes to Kathy and Tommy’s downfalls when discovering the true purpose of their existence in the world. lt;/p>
It becomes more confusing when the students refuse to ask their Guardians, whose purpose is to educate them for the future world, about their lives in the future. Guardians are their only source of information regarding their lives in the future, and the students refuse to ask them questions, finding it very difficult and challenging to. One notable moment where the students could have found out more about their bleak futures was during the outburst of Miss Lucy, where she heavily implied that they would not be living their dream lives- their sole purpose in this world was to ‘donate organs’ and be a ‘good donor’. During the course of Miss Lucy’s unexpected outburst, Kathy describes seeing a heavy ‘downpour’, and this rainfall symbolises the sense of doom and hopelessness that awaits all the students in the wider world. Perhaps it is this ominous sense of foreboding that the students avoid pushing Miss Lucy for more information, although it seems very likely that if someone had pushed for some information they would find out even more about their futures. Through this students’ unwillingness to uncover more about the reason for being, Ishiguro questions the level of acceptance readers may show in their everyday lives, where they accept certain things without question, and as a result may encourage readers to consider how much control they truly have over their lives.
The students’ lack of defiance continues throughout the novel, notably in Part 2, where they are now at the Cottages, which symbolises the transitional stage from childhood to adulthood, where they slowly begin to lose childhood comforts, including the familiarity of the Guardians and Hailsham itself. The students are keen to fit in, particularly Ruth, who does anything to be in favour with the veterans, older people who have lived at the Cottages for longer. For example, Ruth copies many of the gestures the veterans do, including the ‘knocking knuckles lightly on the elbow’, which Kathy observes between Ruth and Tommy. This, along with many other copied mannerisms, emphasise Ruth’s deep need to fit in with the veterans and feel part of their tight knit community, evident in her over-eagerness to fit in, with complete compliance. Through this, Ishiguro shows how it is part of human nature to prioritise fitting into a community over being non-conformist and doing things differently. This is further emphasised when Kathy recalls her and her friends ‘rarely stepping beyond the confines of the Cottages’, and this highlights how accepting the students are- they are given the opportunity to explore further, find out more about their lives, but instead deny the opportunity and stick to the confining system they are part of.
