Questions and Answers for Never Let Me Go
Never Let Me Go
What are some dystopian elements in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go?
Some of the key dystopian elements in Never Let Me Go are lack of individualism (with the corollary of lack of choice), the prevalence of illness, and the failure of the educational system. A...
Never Let Me Go
Describe the cottages and the life the clones lead.
The Cottages are on an old farm and they're often cold and in disrepair. The clones have unrestricted television time and are allowed to take short trips. The center of the Cottages is a farmhouse...
Never Let Me Go
In the novel Never Let Me Go, why do the students and Hailsham's administrators attach such high value to creativity?
On the surface, the students of Hailsham value creativity and art skills because of the social status they infer. Tommy, for example, gets made fun of by his classmates because of his lack of...
Never Let Me Go
In chapter 7 of Never Let Me Go, Miss Lucy says, "It's just as well the fences at Hailsham aren't electrified. You...
Miss Lucy is teaching a poetry lesson to her English class and the topic of conversation falls on soldiers held in World War 2 prison camps. "One of the boys asked if the fences around the camps...
Never Let Me Go
How are women depicted differently than men in Never Let Me Go?
In Never Let Me Go, the vast majority of the characters are female. In fact, there is only one significant male character, Tommy. Adult male characters do not appear, and the reader does not learn...
Never Let Me Go
How can Never Let Me Go be viewed through a Marxist lens?
In Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, a dominant system of exploitation prevails in a world where clones are raised for the sole value of their harvestable organs. The narrative follows...
Never Let Me Go
There are two choices: To accept your fate or to face destruction. To what extent is this true of the characters in...
In the most literal of senses, I don't sense that there is much of a choice. Ishiguro establishes the donor condition in the novel as one in which accepting one's fate is to face destruction in...
Never Let Me Go
What are some motifs in Never Let Me Go?
Two central motifs in Never Let Me Go are art and music. In navigating themes of death, innocence, and eternal recurrence, Ishiguro illustrates how creativity embodies the practice of the soul...
Never Let Me Go
In the novel Never Let Me Go, do the guardians feel any sympathy for the children? How is lying to someone protecting...
The guardians in Never Let Me Go are not all the same and have different attitudes to the clones in their care. Miss Lucy is obviously the most sympathetic of them and her sympathy leads her to be...
Never Let Me Go
Why does Lucy change her mind, and what is Miss Lucy's intention in Never Let Me Go? Miss Lucy told Tommy that it was...
In Never Let Me Go, Lucy embarks on a crusade for social reform. She understands that the clone children are being treated as sets of body parts rather than as human beings, which she finds...
Never Let Me Go
Never Let Me Go has been described as a story about lies and deceit. To what extent do you agree with this view? How...
The entire premise of Ishiguro's narrator's life (and the lives of her friends and classmates) is based on lies and deceit. Kathy, the narrator, is part of a group of young people who are basically...
Never Let Me Go
What is Keffers’s attitude toward the students in Never Let Me Go? Why do you think he acts this way?
Keffers turns up in his muddy van two or three times a week to look the Cottages over. He doesn't talk to the students much; he simply sighs and shakes his head at what he clearly thinks is their...
Never Let Me Go
What similarities can be drawn between the novels Frankenstein and Never Let Me Go?
Both novels contain elements of speculative fiction. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go both explore various themes through characters that do not exist in the real...
Never Let Me Go
Can you give me some quotations from Never Let Me Go to support the theme of indoctrination?
We're looking for evidence of brainwashing, or indoctrination: quotes that show how the authority figures (or maybe even peers) in Kathy's world have "programmed" her or others to believe or accept...
Never Let Me Go
In Never Let Me Go, why don't the "donors" in the story just escape? Why don't they just refuse to sacrifice...
The clones don't think of escaping for the simple reason that this is not really a novel about clones or bioethics. The point is that we just do. All of us. Most of us are not even aware that of...
Never Let Me Go
What are some examples of Kathy's personality from Childhood and personality during Adulthood in Never Let Me Go that...
One of the most defining characteristics about Kathy as a charater and how she develops from childhood to adulthood is the way in which she becomes more and more accepting of her lot in life and...
Never Let Me Go
How does the title of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro apply to specific characters in it? For two female characters...
In the novel, the two main female characters are Kathy and Ruth. For both characters, the phrase "never let me go" means different things. For Kathy (especially in her adult years), the phrase is a...
Never Let Me Go
In the novel Never Let Me Go by Fazuo Ishiguro, Kathy tells readers, "How you were regarded at Hailsham, how much you...
The reason behind putting so much emphasis on creativity is revealed later on in a discussion between Miss Emily, Marie-Claude, Tommy, and Kathy at around page 239. During this discussion, Miss...
Never Let Me Go
How are the cottages a symbolically appropriate setting for the story? (Think of their original use.)
The Cottages are an appropriate setting for the harvesting of the clones' organs as they have been converted from old farm-buildings. Back in the day, the farm would have been used for the...
Never Let Me Go
What is Ishiguro trying to say about our society in the Chapter 22 discussion about the Morningdale Scandal?
The period in which Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel is set is not precisely specified. There are references to the cloning program dating back to the 1950s. The location is England. Cloning actually...
Never Let Me Go
What is a good argument for Never Let me Go?
While the specific subject of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel is cloning, the characters’ experiences and relationships lead the reader to a more basic question about what constitutes human identity. The...
Never Let Me Go
How does Ishiguro represent Kathy in Never Let Me Go?
This is a big question, one that drives a lot of the novel's tension. First of all, if you haven't already done so, you should definitely read Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go because it is a beautiful,...
Never Let Me Go
In Never Let Me Go, how does Ishiguro use Tommy to explore his ideas about love and loss?
One way that Ishiguro is able to use Tommy to explore ideas of love and loss is in how Tommy strives to find hope in both. Ishiguro constructs Tommy as highly optimistic. He strives for the...
Never Let Me Go
How did growing up in Hailsham have a negative effect on the characters?
From the point of view of many readers, growing up at Hailsham has a negative effect on Kathy and many of her peers. For example, they all live in fear of their keepers and of the environment in...
Never Let Me Go
Please give a brief character description for Chrissie and Rodney in Never Let Me Go.
We receive a full description of Chrissie and Rodney in Chapter 12 of this poignant novel. They are a couple who Kathy and her friends meet when they leave Hailsham and go to the Cottages, which...
Never Let Me Go
How does Ishiguro present the theme of loss?
The notion of loss is shown to be one that is intrinsic to the reality of the clones. Kathy and Tommy, in particular, are shown to accept the condition of loss as a part of their being. Loss is...
Never Let Me Go
Please answer this question on Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro: The teacher Lucy Wainright wanted to make the...
The issue that the adults and the children confronted in different ways was when and how the clone children would be prepared for their ultimate purpose. It can be argued that the point at which a...
Never Let Me Go
How is the theme of otherness presented in Never Let Me Go?
Though we come to know protagonist Kathy and her friends Ruth and Tommy as real, feeling people, the story unfolds to reveal the strange lives they live as not-quite people. Kathy and her friends...
Never Let Me Go
In Never Let Me Go, what is the significance of going to Madame's house in order to get a deferment?
This is one of the most tragic points in the novel, in my opinion. Let us not forget the context of this trip to revisit Madame. They believe that Madame and their former headmistress is able to...
Never Let Me Go
In Never Let Me Go, what are the restrictions in this utopian society?
The massive restriction that the central characters face as clones is that they are not free to live their lives as they would like and that they do not have ultimate control over their futures....
Never Let Me Go
How can we compare the moral and ethical issues in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go with our current society?
This question is a broad one, so I will address one specific moral and ethical issue in detail. By writing Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro insists that the reader confront the tension that exists around...
Never Let Me Go
What kind of moral and emotional responses does the novel "Never Let Me Go" provoke? Does the novel examine the...
Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go can be interpreted as a warning, demonstrating to readers that the technological advancements around human life are not without complex ethical and moral issues....
Never Let Me Go
Why do Miss Emily and Madam want to to convince the public that the clones had souls in Never Let Me Go? Why do Miss...
Miss Emily and Madame share the belief that art reveals the soul of the artist. If the clone's art might be seen as soul revealing, then it could be argued that the clones have souls. If it might...
Never Let Me Go
What does Kazuo Ishiguro try to tell us through his novel Never Let Me Go ? What is it all about?
The novel points a dystopian future where human beings are cloned to provide a supply of organs for transplant. This practice, while based in science and a plausible topic for a work of speculative...
Never Let Me Go
In Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, how could we consider Hailsham as a golden cage for the "students" ?
The golden cage image (or what is also commonly called a "gilded cage") is one that suggests one lives in luxury but without freedom. Hailsham appears to be a very high quality boarding school in...
Never Let Me Go
What different ways do the clones have of dealing with fourth donation? What do you think would be the best way to...
The donors in Never Let Me Go know that they will most likely die after their third or fourth donation, but they have been conditioned since early childhood to accept this fate as natural. Even the...
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?
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...
Never Let Me Go
Is there something different about the way the students at Hailsham seek to conform?
I think that one way in which the students' conformity is fundamentally different is rooted in a fear of unknown. To an extent, perhaps Ishiguro is making a statement about all conformity rooting...
Never Let Me Go
Identify connections between Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri.
The major connection between these two texts comes in the way that both Kathy and Gogol, as the protagonists of the two novels, have to move towards acceptance and discovery of their true identity....
Never Let Me Go
In Never Let Me Go, what is the significance of the imaginary game Kathy H. plays with Ruth?
Ruth has an expressive, dominant personality that comes out throughout the novel. Kathy is passive, the follower of the pair, and defers to Ruth's leadership at every turn. We're introduced to...
Never Let Me Go
What is Ruth’s "dream future"?
The idea of having a future apart from donation, possible service as a carer, and then completion is not encouraged by the Hailsham teachers and administrators. The children grow up with little...
Never Let Me Go
In Never Let Me Go, how might Ruth's social behavior at Hailsham and later at the cottages be explained? Why is she...
The idea of a “possible,” the person who had been the original on which a clone was based, intrigues the clone characters who populate Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, but they generally keep their interest...
Never Let Me Go
Why is there so much animal imagery and imaginary animal drawings in Never Let Me Go? What does it signify?
There's a good deal of animal imagery in Never Let Me Go. One has only to think of Tommy's elephant drawing or his drawings of imaginary animals at the Cottages. Then there's Kathy's comparison of...
Never Let Me Go
What ideas are developed by Ishiguro in Never Let Me Go about the ways that individuals take responsibility for...
One of the massive mysteries of this brilliant, disconcerting novel is the way in which Kathy and the other clones seemingly are compliant and never try to rebel or to escape the fate that they...
Never Let Me Go
What sort of techniques does the author use to make Never Let Me Go an appealing book?
I think there are a number of different strategies that Ishiguro uses in this wonderful book. Firstly, we can see that the central strategy he uses is raising our curiosity about these seemingly...
Never Let Me Go
Specific evidence and analysis that proves how the children at Hailsham feel betrayed because the upbringings makes...
When the “students” at Hailsham reach adulthood and leave the institution, they are moved to the Cottages, where they await their fate to be “completed.” Kathy and her friends learn after their...
Never Let Me Go
How does Never Let Me Go relate to the concept of belonging?
Let us remember that the goal of all the clones is to feel like they are proper humans and that they are not "farmed" for the exclusive use of humans until they die. This is where the myth that...
Never Let Me Go
How is the character of Ruth significant to Never Let Me Go as a whole?
Each of the clones must confront their own future in their own way, and much depends on their personality, which is that of the original from whom they were cloned. As children, they are not fully...
Never Let Me Go
Who are the key characters of the novels The Ladies' Paradise, Never Let Me Go, and Frankenstein?
In The Ladies' Paradise by Emile Zola, there are two hugely key characters to know about. The first is Denise Baudu, a young woman who travels to Paris and starts working in a department store. She...
Never Let Me Go
Why don't the clones ever think about trying to escape? Why do they passively accept their fate? Are they in fact,...
One answer, hinted at in the film version, is that the clones are under constant surveillance. This is shown several times when they enter or leave their dwelling and run their wrist past an...
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