Never Let Me Go

When I got back into reading, I collected a few recommendations. One of those recommendations was “Never Let Me Go”, which I had picked up and… taken many pauses while reading (sorry friend!). Not because the book was bad or boring though. More it was just my poor reading habits and wanting to read easier/comfier series instead (so I read a lot of manga instead).

But I did finish it and I really liked it. It’s hard for me to summarize exactly what my favourite aspect of the book is, though I think I’d put it at… the tone of the novel? Maybe there’s a better way to phrase it, it was just the way that the book talked about the world and revealed information in a gradual way without ever feeling extremely blunt about it. (spoilers abound!)

As I imagine was the sort of point of the perspective the novel was told from in the first place. Kathy’s perspective feels a lot someone simply recollecting their memories about the events of their life. She’s not telling a story to anyone in particular, at least not in the way that say a storyteller would tell a story to excite people. I feel like this is most obvious when snippets of information are dropped about the world. Things like her teacher when younger crying lamenting about their fate, or when they talked about Ruth’s possible, or when she talks about her own possible, all of these things are done sort of nonchalantly, as if they were never meant to be big revelations because for Kathy, they weren’t. They were just things they learned about naturally much like how we learn things in school.

This sort of storytelling really adds to the dystopian setting of the novel. It’s something that’s hinted on many points throughout the novel, but learning that the characters are essentially “farmed” for their organs to be donated to others is a… bleak perspective. Primarily because we see it the life and perspective of those donors, and the things they experience. It’s obvious that they don’t live a standard/normal life (comparatively to the “humans”), but the more I learned about their sad reality, the more depressing it got.

I think the peak of this is when Kathy and Tommy talk to Miss Emily at the end and they sort of confirm all the suspicions that the reader builds up in their mind. The saddest part is that we learn that the environment they grew up in is something that their guardians pushed for and that there were worse and much more inhumane conditions the other donors grew up in.

To me, this was the most interesting perspective to sort of consider. To the general public of the world, these donors were considered miracle cures for diseases that were previously uncurable. Practically a magic silver bullet, they saved lives. But of course, reading it from the perspective of these characters, it seems cruel and inhumane to doom them all to an inevitable death. Sure, they can live, but only under the conditions of those in charge of them.

It’s not surprise of course then that there would be people fighting for their rights, hence Hailsham. I could see this reality unfold in today’s society too and rightfully so I imagine there would be people fighting for their rights or calling this treatment inhumane.

But, and they bring this up in the novel too, the question is, how could people live with themselves with the idea of taking these organs from these cloned donors?

I think the answer is simple, and applies to many things in real life too. That being that you just have to not treat them as humans, or like us.

For me, I thought about the concept of lab grown meat/organs. Of course, I confess that I am a meat eater and know about the struggles and inhumane treatments that many animals have to go through, yet I choose to eat meat. Could I say the same if I were to live and raise these animals with my own hands? I’m not sure. Would we feel the same way about lab grown meat if they were really just clones of animals? Does that make it more ethical because they’re copies and not the original?

In the case of the setting of this world, once people start to treat the clones as not humans, the idea of using their organs I imagine comes much easier. Which leads to a sort of paradoxical stance, at least in my opinion. By ignoring them and treating them inhumanely, the world can see them as nothing but tools and put their moral issues aside. But once they are treated humanely, the idea of using them as donors becomes a lot harder and a much heavier sin to bear. Of course, another conflict was what if the clones could replace humans? What if our copies could become better than us? Did they even have the right to? I think there’s a lot of interesting moral dilemmas about cloning that this novel talks about that I enjoyed thinking about.

There are many other aspects of the novel that I think are also interesting, but that particular part is what stood out to me in the end. The way the characters try to cope and deal with their struggles as they learn about their purpose and how to find meaning in their lives is great too.

This was a really good book and I am glad that I did eventually finish it. There are a bunch of other books that I’d like to get to so hopefully this helps kick start me back into reading again!