Student Question
What were the goals of Hailsham's administrators in Never Let Me Go for emphasizing creativity?
"How you were regarded at Hailsham, how much you were liked and respected, had to do with how good you were at 'creating'" (p. 16).
Quick answer:
Hailsham's administrators emphasized creativity to prove that clones had souls and deserved humane treatment. By fostering artistic expression, they aimed to demonstrate the clones' humanity, countering societal views that treated clones as mere organ sources. Miss Emily and others believed showcasing the clones' artwork would challenge perceptions and ensure clones were regarded as fully human, deserving of rights and humane treatment. This approach sought to influence influential figures and promote ethical organ donation practices.
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 Emily reveals that she was the only
one who questioned whether or not Hailsham was morally right. The
morality of Hailsham can be questioned on several
different grounds: (1) Is it morally right to clone human beings for
the mere sake of harvesting their organs? (2) If human beings are cloned, are
they fully human, or do they lack human souls? (3) If cloned
human beings are not fully human, do they need to be treated humanely and with
the same civil rights as actual human beings?
It can be argued that society's current method of organ
transplants is inhumane because ill individuals who need transplants must simply wait until an organ donor passes on so...
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that the ill individual can receive the organ. Many ill patients who need transplantsdon't make it through the waiting period. Hence, it can be
argued that cloning human beings is a more moral method of overseeing organ
donations because more ill individuals are more likely to receive the
organ he/she needs. If more individuals are ensured the rights of life
and happiness, then more civil rights are protected for more
individuals. But while that's more moral for ill individuals, the
question arises, what about the clones? Should we even care about the rights of
clones? As Miss Emily states, their intention behind Hailsham had been to prove
that there was a more humane way of "doing things," such as donating organs to
those who need it. But what's more, as society developed the idea of creating
clones to harvest organs, society also started treating those clones as
merely test tube subjects, not as human beings. Miss Emily and other
founders of Hailsham wanted to also ensure that the clones were treated
humanely. But of course the founders of Hailsham could only prove that
the clones were indeed being treated humanely if they could prove the
clones were being treated like human beings. The artwork
became the solution to the problem of inhumane treatment.
Teaching the clones to be creative in artwork became, they had
hoped, the answer to that question as to whether or
not the clones at Hailsham were indeed being treated
humanely. As Miss Emily phrases it, they encouraged the clones to
create artwork because, "We thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it
more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all(it starting at we)."
Creativity is one of the very few things that separates human
beings from animals. If it can be proved that the clone children possessed the
ability to be creative, then it could be proven that they were fully
human beings and deserved to be treated humanely. Not
only that, once it was proved that the clone children had the ability to be
creative, encouraging them to be creative was a
logical means of ensuring that the clones were indeed being treated
humanely, not as mere test tube subjects. As Miss Emily later
explains, they collected the colones' art work to put on
display all over the country so that prominent people could view the artwork,
such as "cabinet ministers, bishops, [and] all sorts of famous people." In
displaying the clones' artwork, it was there way of saying "'There, look! ...
Look at this art! How dare you claim these children are anything less than
fully human?'" If the founders of Hailsham could successfully make this
statement, then they could ensure that the clones at Hailsham would
continue to be treated, as they hoped,
humanely.
Hence, encouraging creativity was both their way of
proving that the cloned children were both fully human and
worthy of humane treatment and proving that
the cloned children were in reality receiving humane
treatment.