At the end of Part 2, Kathy decides to begin her training to
be a carer. The timing and the circumstances she chose to leave under stuck out
to me, because I did not feel like I would have ever been able to leave in that
way. She was not the first or the last to leave, so her timing was not at all
strange in that regard. However, she left with things completely unresolved
between her best friends and herself. Once Kathy decides it is time for her to
move on, you might expect that she will try to fix things between herself,
Ruth, and Tommy. She does not do this though, and instead she “kept a certain
distance from” them both (203). Kathy says that they “didn’t really talk
properly again at the Cottages, and before [she knew it, [she] was saying [her]
goodbyes” (203).
Kathy had tried to fix things with Ruth, though never with
Tommy, before even deciding to leave. After this though, she had remained frustrated
with her, and the “atmosphere never quite righted itself” (202). After that she
decided to leave, making it seem like she was almost giving up on the
friendships entirely. I could see this as a possibility, because she and Ruth
had many disagreements, but Kathy clearly had not given up on Ruth yet because
she reconnects with her later. When she first begins to care for Ruth some
years later, Kathy recalls there being a “sense of something not being right”
(214). Kathy even knows that this is because of the way they parted at the
Cottages, and therefore she could have avoided the entire awkward situation by
righting things before she left.
If it were me who was about to be leaving, I would have
tried my best to talk with both Ruth and Tommy to figure things out before I
became content to leave. Leaving this large gap in her life for so many years
must have been difficult, and though she eventually reconnects with them both,
she lost a lot of time. Since time is so precious for these clones, I would
want to avoid the conflict and the drama as much as possible, even if I was
unlikely to see my friends for a long time anyways. Leaving things unfinished
in this way would have caused me to feel like I never truly got closure on that
part of my life, and I think that Kathy gets this feeling as well. That is why
she ultimately decided to choose to see Ruth and Tommy again. She, too, wanted
to finally close that chapter of her life, so that she could move on and be
satisfied when they were both gone. However, she could have saved herself the
ill feelings if she would have committed to making things better in the first
place. Then, perhaps, things would not have been so awkward when they reunite.
Though it would have been nice, and maybe more suited to Ishiguro's take of his characters all being good people (because it is not hard to imagine how much Kathy must have hurt her friends by leaving on bad terms), I do not think Kathy resolving the issues with Ruth and Tommy before she left was necessary.
ReplyDeleteRuth and Tommy, though her only close friends left from Hailsham, would not be able to visit her after she became a carer because they are "[N]ot supposed to visit carers"(150). Having no idea if she would become their carers or work with them, Kathy had no real incentive to resolve the issues between them, and maybe Kathy sensed that it was Ruth who needed to resolve these issues.
Though when Kathy started caring for Ruth things were awkward, eventually, Ruth settles the underlying issue of how Kathy and Tommy's relationship should have played out. I do not believe Kathy could have addressed this at the cottages, simply because they were young and less mature. If Kathy had addressed the issues playing out at the time, the underlying issue still would have been present. With no real harm in leaving their relationships strained as she became a carer, for Kathy, initiating the conversation to resolve issues and become friends again right before she left may have just been more painful.