In Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go, the demographics of non-students and students rarely interact with one another. Yet, the perspective the non-student demographic holds of the students is steadfast. A product of fear, the perception reflects the fragility of the relationship between the two demographics. The students— clones bred to donate their internal organs in order to promote the longevity of non-students— reflect the non-students who fear them, both in appearance and mannerisms. In interactions, rare as they may be, students are undetectably different from the non-students. As such, the non-students approach the students before being told they are such, just as they would with another non-student. They actively engage in the interaction. They do not display signs of fear. Only once the student is identified by such classification does the non-student begin to suggest that the student poses them threat. The reaction suggests that without being classified as students, students would be able to join the non-student demographic without causing discomfort or disruption. This thought in itself is a discomfort to the non-students and a disruption to the social structure. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go, the social structure prior to Hailsham closing is maintained through student education in order to ensure the donation program continues.
As most non-students have never interacted with a student, it is the duty of the guardians— non-students who work directly with students and facilitate their academic establishments— to bridge the two demographics. Speaking on behalf of all non-students, former guardian Miss Emily claims: “there would always be a barrier against seeing [the students] as properly human” (Ishiguro 263). Her tone is condescending, immediately denying the possibility of progression toward equity. The weight of “always” is absolute and steadfast in its reinforcement of the tone. She suggests that this perspective among non-students is inherent. However, for this perspective to be inherent, the students would have to be improperly human or “less than human” (Ishiguro 263). To believe that the students are such would be to dismiss form and nature in order to simplify humanness to origin alone. The students are clones. Meaning, they are by definition “the aggregate of genetically identical organisms asexually produced from a single progenitor organism” (Merriam-Webster). Physically, the students are identical to a non-student, somewhere, at some point in time. They fail to be conceptually seen as “properly human” because they were grown in laboratories, not birthed from the individuals they resemble. As such, the non-student demographic prefers to see the students as “shadowy objects in test tubes,” a science experiment unlike themselves (Ishiguro 261).
However, the students themselves are unable to reproduce, yet their demographic continues to be represented in future generations (Ishiguro 83). Therefore, it is the non-students who continue to breed the students with the intention of “requiring [them] to donate” (Ishiguro 263). The determination, despite the fear of the students, to continue breeding more suggests the reliance the non-students have on the donation program. At birth, the students’ sole purpose is to donate their internal organs to non-students, not for they to reproduce, act autonomously or to age until natural death. Those purposes are reserved for the non-students who were naturally brought into existence, for humans. As such, the premature death of the students after the third or fourth donation is not viewed as horrific like it would be if a non-student were to be forced into such conditions. Instead, the death is positively depicted as a student having “completed.” The use of “completion” as a synonym for a student’s death reflects the purpose which the non-students’ assign them. Because the student donated at all, because he increased the longevity of at least one non-student, he has in death completed his purpose according to non-students. However, this origin or lifestyle is not the choice of the student. Students have no autonomy in their fate. Without choice, this fate does in some sense become inevitable, but only because the non-students, through programs like Hailsham, deny students other opportunities. In other words, programs like Hailsham— the exclusive boarding school for students before they begin the donation program— become the barrier denying the students to be recognized as “properly human.”
It is not that Hailsham hides the students from the non-students, or explicitly says they are not like the non-students, but rather distinguishes them as “others” by isolating the demographic. The students are separated to the extent that a non-student could not simply stumble into the place of the other; he would have to demonstrate intention and strenuous determination. “A dark fringe of trees” surrounds the facility, denoting the ground’s boundaries (Ishiguro 50). However, if just to denote the schools boundaries, a single line of trees would be just as sufficient. Instead, the woods are concealing and menacing, easy to become lost within. The form of the woods suggests the intention to keep someone where they are, whether inside or outside, by providing a physical barrier preventing passage. However, the woods are not alone in what surrounds the grounds. These woods are further reinforced by fences which the students inside are explicitly told “aren’t electrified” (Ishiguro 78). However, if this needs to be clarified, then by appearance whether the fence is dangerous or not is ambivalent. The need to clarify that the fence is safe to touch, suggests the threatening, barbed-wire style of the fence. One that by appearance alone warns those who consider crossing it. The use of electrified fences is typically reserved for maximum security facilities housing incarcerated prisoners, government secrets, or wild animals. However, the non-students are well aware of the students’ existence; they are no secret. Those within the boundary are human children in the middle of their education, not incarcerated criminals or animals threatening to attack. Yet, the setting does not reflect this. Beyond the woods, at the edge of the fence, Hailsham would appear to be a cage holding something dangerous inside. Non-students outside the woods and fence must ask why the students must be separated to this extent, if they are not a danger to society.
From within, for the students, it is nearly impossible to escape the grounds, detoured immediately by the woods. However, the students rarely, if ever, try to escape. Hailsham is secluded on nearly all sides by woods that feel “like they cast a shadow over the whole of Hailsham” (Ishiguro 50). The school itself occupies several buildings, pavilions and dormitories, and is by no means something easily concealed by shadow. Therefore, by describing the woods by the enormity of its shadow suggests its treating nature both in size and presence. These woods lay just beyond the Hailsham boundary, marking where the external world begins. As such, the woods are the student’s first consistent interaction with the world beyond Hailsham. To the guardians the woods are just a feature of the natural environment, something unnecessary to be addressed. However, “the woods played on [the student’s] imaginations,” manifesting into “all kinds of horrible stories” throughout the history of Hailsham; many of which are fantastically false (Ishiguro 50). Each time the stories surface, the guardian's fail to correct these conceived conceptions, dismissing them only as childish nonsense. Without educating the students otherwise, these conceptions occupy the foundation of the student’s understanding regarding what exists beyond Hailsham: a threatening world in which the students are unwelcome.
Therefore, completely isolated from the outside world, the students depend on the guardians to educate them about what exists beyond Hailsham, to prepare them for life after they leave. However, for students after Hailsham is the donation process. The guardians are at all times aware of this; even when the students are not. It is the guardians who deny the students a thorough introduction to why the non-students bred them because the guardians believe it is “best for the students in the long run” (Ishiguro 267). This perspective hypocritically stems from the guardians who are not students themselves, who are free from the fate of donating. It reflects the position of those unaffected. That in the long run, regardless of the students’ knowledge or ignorance of the donations, they will be required to donate. To think of ignorance as “best for the students” suggests the unwavering determination to continue students through the donation program (Ishiguro 267). However, it is not that the subject of donations is forbidden, or entirely ignored in the students’ schooling. Instead, the guardians time “very carefully and deliberately everything” in order to guarantee that the the students are “always just too young to understand properly the latest piece of information” (Ishiguro 82). The malice of timing when a student learns about the donation program suggest the fragility of the system. Reflecting the fear that if the students were to understand their fate, they might reject it. Taught in chunks before the student has the capacity to examine and question the information, the students must blindly accept it. To have this knowledge, but to not understand it in its full weight, is to be kept ignorant. In this ignorance, the students are prisoners to the death-sentence by the non-students.
The guardians instead dedicate a majority of the students’ education to the arts. Through encouraging the students to create and interact with works, the guardians seek to “prove that [the students] had souls,” despite their origin belonging to science (Ishiguro 260). Creation is an outward manifestation of the internal. Such that creation in any form is the expression of humanity. This humanity is believed to be held within an individuals’ soul, and belong to humans alone. For an individual to be able to create outwardly, the soul must already be present within. The students, throughout their careers at Hailsham, create hundreds of art works, which the guardians confiscate to demonstrate to their fellow non-students that the students are in fact “fully human” (Ishiguro 262). The irony however is that the guardians prove this in order to establish disgust that “there are students being reared in deplorable conditions” (Ishiguro 261). However, there is no concern with the cruel expectations of the donation program, just the students’ holding conditions prior to donating.
Non-students fear the students not because they are inherently different, but because they threaten the social structure to which the non-students have become accustomed. Non-students— including the guardians— depend on the donation program’s continuing. This maintains the perception of “otherness,” despite the students' sameness in respect to the non-students, even within Hailsham. The donations is, after all, why the students were bred by non-students at all. It is why they exist: “to cure so many previously incurable diseases,” even at the cost of their own lives (Ishiguro 262). It is inconsiderable to ask a society dependent on the donation program, which cures life-threatening diseases, to “put away that cure” in order to save the remedy (Ishiguro 263). However, it is also inhumane to demand a certain demographic of humans to be that remedy, regardless of origin. With the proximity the guardians have to the students, they could not deny the students their humanity. However, they could persuading them into their preexisting fate. If the students then chooses to donate, but is not forced to, it is humane to allow them to do so.
Hailsham, as a school, does not educate the students, but suggests a sense of autonomy in the students’ decision to fulfill their bred purpose. By offering an education in the arts alone, the students are ill-equipped to support themselves outside the donation program. The guardians consistently present the program as a purposeful contribution to society throughout the student’s schooling, but do not confirm that the students understand the cost of this contribution. They suggest through omission that the donation program is the only opportunity to be considered. Consequently, it then becomes the student’ only option. At the cottages, there is no guardians. There is no woods or fence or voice suggesting they should donate. The students are even free to leave the grounds if they wish, but when they take advantage of this new freedom, they always return. Until the cottages, the students were entrapped in a prison-like facility with the vague pressures to donate and a constant demand that they create. However, the guardians fail the students who "aren’t taught enough” to consider opportunities beyond donating once they have left Hailsham (Ishiguro 29). The students lack the transferable and basic skills necessary to work outside the donation program. As such, they are marginalized by circumstances into their bred fate. However, through schools like Hailsham, they live in an illusion that when they begin to donate, it is the product of their own autonomy. When the students believe they have the power to choose the donations program, the social structure remains unthreatened.
Works Cited
“Clone.” Merriam-Webster, June 2018, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clone.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. Vintage International, 2005.
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