Question

How does Kazuo Ishiguro use the character Tommy to explore ideas about being an outsider in the novel Never Let Me Go?

Accepted Answer

Tommy has difficulties with discipline and social conformity. He acts out in school and his misbehavior gets him into trouble. The society portrayed in Ishiguro's novel imagines a subculture in which young people are raised in regimented ways to prepare them to be organ donors. They are expected to follow strict rules to safeguard their physical well-being, and are kept sheltered from the world at large. Tommy's tendency to disobey the rules at school show he has a strong-willed personality. He is also an artist and uses his drawings to help prove to Madam that he deserves a deferral because his artistic temperament (as well as his long-time love for Kathy) makes him special.
Tommy also manages to survive three donation procedures with no apparent ill effects, whereas it is said that many donors only survive two, or at least experience severe health problems after their first donation. His urge to survive and his violent outburst at being told there are no deferrals reinforce the idea that he is very aware of his unique individuality, and that the system is unfair in its relegation of him and Kathy to the pool of organ donors who are effectively raised for slaughter (perhaps a commentary on huge corporate agriculture practices). The fact that they are clones does not detract from Tommy's strng sense of his own individuality.

Answer

From the beginning of the novel, Tommy is a character who is out of step with his Hailsham peers. In the early pages of the book, Ishiguro uses the character of Tommy to illustrate two ways a young person can interpret the experience of being an outsider.
Tommy is a boy who feels his emotions deeply, and the others treat his outbursts as commonplace and amusing. From a young age, Tommy is taunted and baited by the other boys, and most of the girls find his humiliation entertaining. Though he is known to be a sensitive soul, prone to temper tantrums since he was very small, he is considered to be the source of his own problems, which is a common interpretation of negative situations many outsiders face even today. This comment on the state of being an outsider is the first one Ishiguro makes through the character of Tommy: to be an outsider is to be vulnerable and worse, to be subject of blame by the mainstream party as the cause of their own difficulties.
Later, Tommy is singled out by Miss Lucy, and he interprets her unusual confidences in him as evidence that he is special, which is another common occurrence for outsiders: often, at first, outsiders receive different treatment than others, and in their innocence, they interpret the treatment as a positive experience. Only later does this kind of situation seem more complicated. Tommy, however, seems to maintain some semblance of this innocence as he matures, which makes his disappointment later in the novel all the more poignant.

Never Let Me Go

How does Kazuo Ishiguro use the character Tommy to explore ideas about being an outsider in the novel Never Let Me Go?

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