Structural Isolation to Maintain Social Order
In Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go, the demographics of non-students and students rarely interact with one another. Yet, the perspective which the non-student demographic has toward 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 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. When interactions occur, the non-students approach the students before being told they are such, just as they would 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 a 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 Never Let Me Go, the perception of otherness and structural isolation at a young age ensures that students continue to abide by the social structure, even when capable of disrupting it.
As most non-students never interact with the students, it is the duty of the guardians— non-students who work directly with students and facilitate their schooling— to introduce the two demographics without having the two demographics actually interact. If the two demographics do not interact, then each is an abstract conception to the other. 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 a progression toward equity. The weight of “always” is absolute and steadfast in reinforcing her tone. She suggests that this shared 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). The non-students favor any indication that the students are different from themselves to claim that because of this indication, then the students must not be human. By believing such is 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. Students are however not birthed from the individuals they resemble but are an identical match. Yet, the non-students fail to see the students as “properly human” because they are a product of laboratories. Because of this origin, the non-student demographic fears the students whom they perceiver are “shadowy objects in test tubes,” a science experiment unlike themselves (Ishiguro 261).
The irony is that if the non-students fear the students so greatly, they have the power to exterminate the students, but choose to not do such. Students themselves are unable to reproduce, yet several generations of students have existed (Ishiguro 83). The non-students continue to breed new students with the intention of “requiring [them] to donate” (Ishiguro 263). Non-students breed students for their organs, not so they may reproduce, act autonomously or age until natural death. These purposes are reserved for non-students. Even the students' premature deaths after three or four donations are not horrific to the non-students, but a consequence of what the students are. Instead, the students' deaths are positively depicted as a student “completing.” The use of “completion” as a synonym for a student’s death reflects the fulfillment of 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, in his death, he completes his purpose, according to the non-students. The initial decision to produce the students reflects that the non-students would not allow their own demographic to endure these same conditions, so they constructed an alternative. In order then to allow the students to continue in these conditions, the students must continue to be viewed as not human. The determination— despite the fear non-students have toward the students— to continue breeding more students suggests the reliance that the social structure has on the donation program is greater than the fear non-students have of the students.
Programs like Hailsham— the exclusive boarding school which educates students prior to the donation program— become the barrier denying the students to be recognized by the non-students as more than an abstract conception. Hailsham does not hide the students from the non-students or explicitly promote their otherness. Instead, Hailsham distinguishes students as “others” by isolating the demographic starting at an early age. Hailsham separates the students to the extent that a non-student could not stumble into where the students reside; he would have to demonstrate intention and strenuous determination. “A dark fringe of trees” surrounds the facility, denoting the grounds’ boundaries (Ishiguro 50). By describing the woods as a dark fringe suggests its concealing and menacing nature. It is as much a barrier as a border. The woods intend to keep someone where they are, whether inside or outside, by preventing easy passage. However, the woods are not alone in what surrounds the grounds. Fences further reinforce these woods. Fences which guardians explicitly affirm “aren’t electrified” (Ishiguro 78). If this must be clarified, then by appearance the fence's threat is ambivalent. The affirmation suggests the aggressive, barbed-wire style of the fence. One that by appearance alone warns those who consider crossing it. Electrified fences are typically reserved separating incarcerated prisoners, protecting government secrets, or housing wild animals. The non-students are well aware of the students’ existence, but not of their nature; they are children in school, not incarcerated criminals or menacing animals, yet they are kept as such. Non-students outside the woods and fence must ask why the students are isolated if not because they pose a threat. Beyond the woods, at the edge of the fence, Hailsham appears to be a cage containing something dangerous, further reinforcing the non-student’s pre-existing fear toward what is housed inside.
For the students within the grounds, it is nearly impossible to escape, detoured immediately by these boundaries. However, even at a young age, the students rarely, if ever, attempt to escape. Hailsham is secluded on nearly all sides by these woods which 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 outside world touches Hailsham’s grounds. As such, the woods are the students' first consistent interaction with the world beyond Hailsham. To the guardians, the woods are just a feature of the natural environment, something unnecessary to address. 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 guardians fail to correct these conceived conceptions, dismissing them only as childish nonsense. Without educating the students otherwise, these conceptions occupy the foundation of the students’ perception of 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 the school and to prepare them for life after they leave. However, for students, after Hailsham, this 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, believing it is “best for the students in the long run” (Ishiguro 267). This perspective stems hypocritically from the guardians who are not students and are therefore free from the fate of donating. The guardians recognize that regardless of the students’ knowledge or ignorance of the donations, their students will be required to donate. However, their belief that ignorance is “best for the students” demonstrates their unwavering determination to continue students through the donation program (Ishiguro 267). In their lessons, the subject of donations is not forbidden, or entirely ignored, but timed “very carefully and deliberately” to guarantee that the students are “always just too young to understand properly the latest piece of information” (Ishiguro 82). The precision of timing exactly when a student should learn about the donation program suggest the danger of educating the students. Reflecting the non-students’ fear that if the students were to understand their fate, they might reject it. Although rejection from a student when they are still a child is manageable, as the child grows, this rejection could evolve into revolt if not defused before adulthood. Instead, by teaching the information in chunks before the student has the capacity to analyze and question, the child must blindly accept what he is taught. To have the knowledge, but do not understand it in its full weight, is to be kept ignorant. In this ignorance, the students are unequipped to challenge the social structure.
The guardians dedicate a majority of the students’ education to the arts. By encouraging the students to create works, the guardians seek to “prove that [the students] have souls,” despite their origin belonging in science (Ishiguro 260). Creation is an outward manifestation of the internal, such that creation in any form is an expression of one’s soul. For an individual to create an outward expression, the soul must already be present within. The students, throughout their careers at Hailsham, create hundreds of artworks, which the guardians confiscate to demonstrate to their fellow non-students that the students are in fact “fully human” (Ishiguro 262). However, creation can also be to generate imitations or commodities, without implementing notable innovation from precedents. In this sense, an individual can create without challenging the societies in which these works are produced. This is the mode of creation which is encouraged at Hailsham. Works that create without innovating suggest that the students exhibit a capacity for a soul, but deny the creator full humanness. With this, the students are in fact human but remain subordinate and inferior to their non-student counterpart. The irony is that the guardians prove this to provoke disgust in the fact that students are "being reared in deplorable conditions,” not to draw attention to the cruel expectations of the donation program once the students reach adulthood (Ishiguro 261). This purpose— although challenging the perception the non-students maintain— does not threaten to dismantle the social structure. The guardians do not intend to teach the students anything beyond what they have been teaching. Instead, they intend to treat the students when they are children like the humans their creations suggest they are.
Non-students— including the guardians— depend on the donation programs continuing, and benefit from the system when students fail to recognize their sameness to their non-student counterpart. Even the guardians must conserve some of the pre-existing perceptions of the student's “otherness,” despite operating a program to prove otherwise; this is to their own benefit as non-students. The donations are the purpose of breeding the students at all. The donations “ cure so many previously incurable diseases” at the cost of the student, rather than the non-student benefactor (Ishiguro 262). According to Miss Emily, it is inconsiderable to ask a society dependent on the donation program, which cures life-threatening diseases, to “put away that cure” to save the remedy (Ishiguro 263). Her verbiage “to put away” reflects an unawareness that if they have the technology to breed students, they likely have the technology to find alternative cures. The need to breed these students at all-- never mind to continue breeding them-- suggests it is inhumane for non-students to force their own to donate. Yet Hailsham’s mission poses that the students are “properly human,” just like their non-student counterpart. If students are distinguished as eligible to donate because their origin suggests they are less human, but their nature suggests otherwise, then it is problematic that students still be forced to undergo the donation program. However, if Hailsham raises students in similar conditions to their non-student counterpart and they then choose to donate, it would be humane to allow them to do so without promoting disruption within the social system.
To prevent disruption of this social structure, Hailsham does not educate the students to live independent of the donations system. Until the cottages, the students have no experiences beyond the school grounds and no sense of independence. Through isolation within a closed environment, the students have no choice but to accept whatever the guardians offer. Therefore, the students only know what they are explicitly taught. Before the milestone of the cottages, the guardians are always present and take care of the student's general wellbeing, including preparing meals, assigning living arrangements, and providing education. Hailsham's art-heavy education proves that the students are human, while the school's mission ironically denies students opportunities to challenge “the world, requiring students to donate” (Ishiguro 263). At the cottages, there are no guardians, no woods and no fence trapping the imprisoning the students until they start donating. In this time, the students learn to drive and have the means to flee from the cottages and consequently their oncoming donations but never do. The students may take advantage of leaving the cottages for a day or two, but even with this new freedom, they always return. Their education which previously focused on the arts denies students the necessary skills to support themselves beyond the cottages or outside the donation program. Even language to express ideas which challenge the program is absent in their education. In a sense, Miss Lucy is correct that students "aren't taught enough" because the guardians' education only prepares the students with the skills to donate.
Even if the students were to flee without skills to live independently, there would be an initial, if not lasting, backlash toward their perceived otherness when they integrate into non-student society. To flee the donation program, the students would need non-students from outside this system to help or somewhere beyond this society to flee, both of which are not easily, if at all, accessible. After all, the society which they would be integrating into is the same society which requires the students to participate in this program. According to Miss Emily, “no one wants to be seen supporting [the students]” given the post-Morningdale societal state, let alone be found helping undermine this donation program which the society relies on (Ishiguro 263). Furthermore, the decision to flee is not only inexpressible but unprecedented. The certainty that the student will successfully survive outside the system if they were to flee is unavailable.
When the students return to the cottages, this decision appears like a choice to not threaten the system, rather than the most comfortable long-term available option. After all, how long can a student flee after being supported their entire life, without skills to help themselves or the aid of others? Even the communication skills required to collect students to flee in numbers are unavailable, isolating each student from one another. For the students, it the only option that guarantees a known outcome. The guardians consistently present the program as a purposeful contribution to the outside society, starting at a young age without confirming that the students understand the cost of this contribution. The donation program offers a sense of belonging through communal purpose. They suggest through omission that the donation program is the only opportunity to be considered by students and without proof otherwise, it becomes the only option. At least, the only option which appears safe, like an extension of their childhood school. If the students are incapable of expressing a desire to flee or revolt, how can they find safety outside the donation system? The students live in an illusion that when they accept their fate to donate, they exhibit autonomy. However, their early isolation and lack of help beyond their person prevent access to other opportunities and emotionally isolate them in adulthood. When the sense of isolation continues from captivity to freedom, the idea of freedom isn’t freeing, but a furthering of one’s own isolation.
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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