KAZUO ISHIGURO'S USE OF CLONES AS A METAPHOR TO EXPRESS HUMAN VALUES AND EMOTIONS IN NEVER LET ME GO

Abstract

Exploring memories, identities, trauma, and nostalgia is a cakewalk for Kazuo
Ishiguro, a Japanese-born British novelist. His novels mainly elaborate on children's trauma.
Never Let Me Go, which is often claimed to be a sci-fi novel for its characterization of cloned
humans (who are termed as students throughout the novel), ironically lacks much content
about science. It instead deals with human values such as love, friendship, memories,
mortality, and moral teachings. Ishiguro specializes in dealing with trauma among children;
this novel also does not exhibit his talents in the area. He gives a scathing critique on how
children are generally deprived of truths at their young age about life, due to which they do
not develop the ability to tackle real-life situations. However, the author stresses that not all
children fail or become depressed because of the truths deprived or manipulated or skipped in
the teachings from the school. Through the character Kathy, the author tries to portray that a
child, brought up away from the real world and manipulated from the truths about the natural
world, can build up the courage to survive despite the trauma they had as a child; the former
quality portrayed through the characters, Ruth and Tommy. The three characters being a
clone, brought up in Hailsham (a Boarding school in England where the clones are brought
up in isolation without any contact from the world), are metaphors that express the
psychological conditions of human beings. This article intends to emphasize that Never Let
Me Go metaphorically throws limelight upon the inability of human beings to face death,
even though they are aware that they are immortal and their desires about life and love and
memories through the clone characters from the novel. It also provides a contrast study about
the psyche of humans and clones and the socialization attempts between the two.