The main characters of this novel are clones created
solely to serve as disposable organ donors and raised in an entirely artificial
environment. They have no families,
cannot hold normal jobs, and have all important decisions made for them as they
live apart from the rest of society. One of the main themes of Kazuo Ishiguro’s
Never Let Me Go is the characters’
struggle to find normality in this life of artificiality, and it leads Tommy
and Kathy to separate at the end of the story.
The search for normality despite the artificiality of the
character’s lives is a major theme in this book which reoccurs in many scenes. For example, the clones are utterly incapable
of having children, yet Kathy listens to the song “Never Let Me Go” by Judy
Bridgewater and imagines it is about a sterile woman who suffers “some sort of
miracle and…has a baby”(Ishiguro 70).
The song allows Kathy to pretend that is possible for her to have
children and a normal life even though it is not. Similarly, when the characters arrive at the
Cottages, they come with the notion that the number of books someone had read
reflects how well he or she is “settling at the Cottages”(Ishiguro 123). Thus, those who are well read are supposed to
be more normal, thus showing how much the artificial parts of the clones lives
had prevented them from understanding what is actually normal while the fact
that they lie so much about the number of novels they have read shows both
their desire for normality and the ultimate artificiality of everything in
their lives. The tension between the
real artificiality and desired normalcy also appears in even the basic patterns
of behavior at the Cottage. Shortly after
her arrival, Kathy notices that the “veteran couples had taken from TV programmes”
many of the mannerisms that they use, thus copying something artificial in
their desire to find the normality of the outside world(Ishiguro 121). Finally,
the way that many of the clones dream about having jobs that are impossible for
them to hold is also a result of the tension between the normal and artificial.
Kathy and Tommy separate because of he desires to preserve
a sense of normalcy despite the constraints that his artificial life impose on
him. After Ruth’s death, Tommy and Kathy
begin a healthy and loving relationship with each other in spite of their status
as people constrained to die. However, eventually
Tommy’s fourth donation and death approach, and he begins to have physical problems
like kidney trouble. Therefore, he tells Kathy that they have to separate because
there will be “much more stuff like that coming”(Ishiguro 280). Her having to suffer through all his problems
and witness him weaken and die would destroy the illusion of normality that they
had built, so she must leave.
The principle characters of this novel search for
normalcy amidst the artificiality of their lives.
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