Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro Book Analysis Example

Never let me go tells the story of Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy as they grow up and learn about the realities of their world. They go through their daily lives growing as individuals and closer together as alumni of the safe haven that was Hailshem knowing their eventual fate would be to have their delicate, vital organs harvested from their bodies. In the novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, the idea of deferrals, possibles, and the gallery are all ways to display human fear of death, the need to find purpose, and the role of art in our society. 

The idea of deferrals carries throughout the story in an engaging way. Deferrals embody escapism from the cruelty of reality and are comparable to spirituality in the way that the way one's behavior determines if they will expire or not. If two characters could prove that they are truly in love with one another they would have longer to be with one another and consequently wouldn’t die. What’s unfortunate is that it will never happen. Miss Emily declared it plainly, "And for the few couples who get disappointed, the rest will never put it to the test anyway. It's something for them to dream about, a little fantasy. What harm is there? But for the two of you, I can see this doesn't apply. You are serious. You've thought carefully. You've hoped carefully." As she stated, it’s a fantasy. Nothing but a tall tale for her pupils to hold on to while they learn to grip the harshness of existence. The only problem is that it’s devastating for students who are serious about deferrals like Kathy and Tommy were. Ruth wasted the opportunities that Kathy and Tommy could have had together, recognizing that they were truly in love. At the end of the novel she apologies. Ruth says, “It should have been you two. I’m not pretending I didn’t always see that. Of course, I did, as far back as I can remember. But I kept you apart. I’m not asking you to forgive me for that. That’s not what I’m after just now. What I want is for you to put it right. Put right what I messed up for you.” Following this, she sends them to Madame’s address where Miss Emily relays the bad news. Humans are afraid of death and like our reality, people search for things that extend our life span, whether it be a treatment, lifestyle, or religion, and are often left disappointed.

Imagination is something that thrives in Hailsham and the Cottages because there is nothing else. Miss Lucy crushed all of their dreams and aspirations when she told the students that they didn’t have a future. “None of you will go to America, none of you will be film stars. And none of you will be working in supermarkets as I heard some of you planning the other day. Your lives are set out for you. You'll become adults, then before you're old before you're even middle-aged, you'll start to donate your vital organs. That's what each of you was created to do.” One of the ways the students cope is through the concept of possibles. Because all of the students are clones, they believe that somewhere they must have a possibility or someone they are clones of. “The basic idea behind the possible theory was simple and didn't provoke much dispute. It went something like this. Since each of us was copied at some point from a normal person, there must be, for each of us, somewhere out there, a model getting on with his or her life.” This idea becomes more evident when Chrissie and Rodney come to the cottages claiming to have seen Ruth’s possible living her dream life. It is a way of proving to themselves that they might have had a purpose if it wasn’t for their predicament. People, like the clones, also fantasize about an alternate reality where they were born into different situations or made different choices. 

The gallery was important to some students more than others. Some saw it as a way to find purpose in one's life while others saw it as an opportunity to earn tokens for the monthly sales. The students were taught to believe that the point of the gallery was to give a window to the soul. Tommy said, “… She told Roy that things like pictures, poetry, all that kind of stuff, she said they revealed what you were like inside. She said they revealed your soul” referencing what Ms. Lucy told them. When they were told differently, it was very distressing. “… Well, you weren’t far wrong about that. We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.” A lot of people go soul searching looking for answers to why we exist, why anything exists without proof that humans have souls at all. Without proof that humans aren’t just complex organisms floating through space on a rock. Even if they did have souls, it doesn’t matter because they have no other choice but to eventually complete and no one knows what happens after that. 

Humans are complex beings. We are conscious beings and therefore try to find explanations for things around us. Whether that’s if we can avoid death, if we have a purpose, or if we have souls. Like Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, we don't realize how much time we truly have until it is all gone. This leads to us wasting our time just as Ruth and Tommy did. We all "complete" and we all have a limited number of days. Because we know this we should spend our days wisely. We should spend the time we have with loved ones and doing things we love and showing those we love.