A portion of the in-class discussion centered around the claim of Ishiguro’s that the text is about three people—Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth— who are fundamentally decent. This claim of the author was challenged and qualified to be more appropriate as two decent human beings and another who simply acted as a self-absorbed tyrant. However, there is more to Ruth’s character than the first two-thirds of the novel provide. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, Ruth is a character whose actions depend greatly on context and who ultimately chooses the path of decency.
In her narration, Kathy notes the existence of “two quite separate Ruths” in her perspective (129). There is the selfish Ruth who will do anything to impress those of a higher status and the Ruth who Kathy shares nightly talks with and trusts with her secrets. Simply possessing this gentler, more decent side does not in and of itself categorize Ruth as a fundamentally good human. She still betrays Kathy’s trust and manipulates her, especially when relationships are involved. However, she does not stay this way in the final part of the novel.
The challenges Ruth faces in her journey to decency make her a more realistic character. She is not a Beth March whose only shortcoming is that she occasionally desires to have idle hands; she is more like the other sisters and must overcome her selfishness to put the well-being of others ahead of her desires. Ruth is not a malevolent character; rather, she acts according to her own wishes without being cognizant of the impact she has on others’ lives. This is a character flaw that she overcomes prior to completing.
Ruth ultimately realizes the error of her ways and attempts to repair the lives she has harmed prior to completing. Not expecting for Kathy to forgive her mistreatment of her, Ruth decides to “ask [her] all the same” (231). She acknowledges that lying to Kathy was horrible of her, but her actions in keeping Kathy and Tommy apart constituted “the worst thing [she] did” (232). Admitting one’s failures takes a great strength of character, and this is something Ruth exhibits prior to her death. She goes on further to suggest Tommy and Kathy pursue a deferral and have a chance at what her decisions deprived them.
Ruth is certainly not decent, nor is she likable, throughout the majority of the novel. However, upon truly facing her mortality she takes the opportunity to repair what she has harmed and become a decent, yet flawed, human.
In Never Let Me Go, Ruth is by far the character who undergoes the most development. In the beginning, disdain for Ruth comes easily. As a child, she is bossy and vengeful. Whenever someone wrongs her, whether intentionally or not, Ruth gets back at this person. This includes her best friend, Kathy, illustrated when Ruth makes sure to exclude Kathy from “secret guard stuff” (53) out of spite. This behavior continues as she ages and escalates at the Cottages, where she works to impress "the veterans” (129), lies to Kathy, mistreats Tommy, and pretends to have forgotten her Hailsham days altogether.
ReplyDeleteUntil the last part of the novel, Ruth is far from an ideal friend. Many people would not likely classify her as a decent human being. However, as the narrator evaluates Ruth in hindsight, she acknowledges that the way some stories were related to the reader may contain bias as they are one-sided accounts. Kathy notes that “when [she] thinks about it now, [she] can see things more from Ruth’s viewpoint” (129). Ruth and Kathy don’t meet again until they are older, at which point Ruth expresses her deep regret about her treatment of Kathy, and she even goes as far as to state that she does not expect to be forgiven for her actions. Towards the end of the novel, Ruth is vastly different than she was at the beginning. She has grown and changed; something that makes her seem even more human and relatable to the reader.