This past weekend I ventured all the way to Bury St. Edmunds to visit my cousin who lives there. (I know I was supposed to tell you, but it was very last minute and I didn’t die so… I’m sorry.) On the tube journey out, I was finishing up Never Let Me Go and couldn’t help but feel a sense of connection with Kathy. This was my first time this whole trip taking the tube alone, and the fact that I was going all the way to Epping didn’t exactly make it a dipping my toes into the water kind of thing. I just jumped straight in and didn’t look back. Mostly because looking back would end in turmoil, and also because, despite all my fears, I do genuinely have a curiosity of the world and what it holds beyond the borders I and others have created for myself.
This is where I feel most connected to what Kathy goes through in this novel. Despite there being a whole dystopian plot happening in Never Let Me Go, but I feel that Ishiguro is much more concerned with the transition from childhood to adulthood. Kathy deals constantly with her wish to go back to Hailsham to relieve the good old days of childhood, but also with wanting to find out what it is exactly she is meant to become. And like myself, she knows that to do that she must leave behind some of the things she once held close to her heart.
Riding the tube alone may seem minuscule in comparison to what many go through, but for someone who has never been more than a day’s drive from home, it was relatively nerve-racking. As I was sitting on that train, reading about Kathy growing up, leaving Hailsham, and crossing the country on long and lonely drives, I realized something. Maybe, you don’t have to be ready. Maybe you can just leap. Jump and hope for the best. And maybe that’s what everyone does. Maybe Kathy and I aren’t so alone as we feel.
When talking with my cousin the other day, I was telling her how I may one day have to move across the country to New York City. I felt that the topic of moving away an appropriate one to discuss with her due to the fact that she, you know, lives in a totally different country. She told me that she didn’t stop to think through the more emotional parts of leaving home. In her eyes, coming here would be good for her; she felt it was where she needed to be in order to grow and that she doesn’t regret it for a second.
And she’s right. For Kathy, moving out of the Cottages and starting her life as a “carer,” while full of implications, also gave her the opportunity to grow a backbone. No longer would she let Ruth “get her way like she’d done in the past” (230). By the end of the novel, she has grown and learned more about the world than she ever would have staying behind with the others. Ruth too goes through a period of growth after leaving the cottages. As seen after she admits to Tommy and Kathy that she kept them apart and now realizes they should be together. While together they had fun and supported each other, I see now after this trip and reading this book, that there are some things you can’t realize if you stay where you’re comfortable.
So this small trip on the underground may not have been a toe-dip situation at the moment, but I think in the long run that trip (and this whole study abroad experience) could potentially act as a stepping stone for where I end up next. And just because you move away doesn’t mean you lose everything you left behind. Even Kathy reunites with Ruth and Tommy, and together they rekindle their childhood beliefs of deferrals and the Gallery. And together they deal with the disappointment of reality.
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