Ambrosia Organica

Another essay, because I just love to bore you whilst wallowing in my own genius. [A+ foh sho]


-----
“Apes with ego trips” : while an unnervingly accurate description of the human condition, it doesn’t even begin to explain the depths of modern self-absorption. The ego has become so inflated as to strive to prolong natural lifespan; an undertaking bringing man scathingly close to developing a God complex. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go portrays this quest in a horrifying and surprisingly realistic light, exploring humanity’s tendency to destroy its own innocence through an increasing obsession with mortality.

In Hailsham, triviality was everything. Pencil cases became social weapons, and deliverymen transformed into spy agents of the most sinister kind. Naïve and immature it might seem, but for the resident ‘students’ it was all they had. The carefully controlled containment of the clones from the outside world forced them to seek entertainment and value within their four walls; with no family to tie themselves to, they instead invested in each other. Relationships, from friends to lovers to one-offs, became a central part of their innocent lives, companionship a necessity of survival. During their time at Hailsham this interdependency flourished in their enclosed environment. Then they left to the Cottages, the next transition before eventual ‘donation’. The three protagonists-Kathy, Ruth and Tommy-were lucky enough to stay together, but Ishiguro makes it clear that it is here they begin to realize the finite nature of their friendship; and, similarly, their lives. Ruth points it out first; brusquely informing Kathy she has “still got this idea. Us Hailsham lot, we have to stay together, a tight little bunch, must never make any new friends.” Her brash words are a crude reminder of their ‘circumstances’: the end of their lives is fast approaching, and all they have ever clung to, their very childhood, is ending as well. It’s a loss that leaves them with an emptiness hollower than that of a missing lung.

Death is a tragedy. Every death is mourned, no matter its victim. We have sayings about it, sections in the newspaper dedicated to it. We’ve been singing, painting, and writing about it for hundreds of thousands of years. We are a death-oriented culture, every breath seen as one less before you die. It is not, then, surprising, that the idea of a ‘normal’ death unsettles us so. Created by Ishiguro is a world where to die is to ‘complete’. Blasé at best, the euphemism conjures up a horror within us that makes our survival instincts curdle. The positive outlook on death the clones possess effectively desensitizes the issue, turning harsh reality into an acceptable inevitability. Like the gore splashed on screen to any modern 13-year-old with a penchant for video games. The disturbing concept of an early, controlled death is numbed to the mind, its initial horror dissipated by a perpetuated sense of normalcy. Kathy’s intimate account of her life as a clone enforces this sense, the cool ‘matter-of-fact’ style almost convincing the audience themselves into this ‘normalcy’. The extent to which this is maintained is disturbing, Kathy herself looking forward to “finishing at last come the end of the year.” (4) To epitomize lost innocence is to witness life lost. Is this not the very purpose of clones? We shorten their lives to lengthen ours, all in the name of immortality.

Morals are considered secondary when confronted with longevity. Indeed Ishiguro explores the matter blatantly, speaking through the distant characters of Miss Emily and Madame, whose soliloquies are almost patronizingly explanatory and morally enthused. Plot-wise this serves Ishiguro well, filling in gaps and unanswered questions unavoidably raised whilst reading. However, his usage of them as vehicles is limited, their elucidations only scratching the surface of the true lack of ethic portrayed through this fictional world. Miss Emily explains, “However uncomfortable people were about your existence, their overwhelming concern was that their children, their spouses, their parents, their friends did not die…” (258) This brings to point the conflict of valuing one human life over another; for are clones not made of exactly the same things as humans are? Do they not think and feel and breathe much the same? Decidedly not, as the populace preferred to think of them rather as “shadowy objects in test tubes” existing “only to supply medical science.” (256) Ishiguro conceives a mass swell of ethical indifference, predicting the future of morality, or rather, lack of it.

Unsurprisingly, money plays a large role in the redistribution of ethical boundaries explored in the novel. The discovery of this is not until later, during Kathy and Tommy’s ‘enlightening’ visit to their former guardians, but it is apparent enough. All decisions considering clones were first and foremost based on wealth. This much is clear, as Miss Emily explains, “so long as a corporation or politician could see a benefit in supporting us, then we were able to keep afloat…And all those influential people […] vanished. We lost our sponsors, one after the other, in a matter of just over a year…in the end […] we were obliged to close.” (259, 260) Callousness in regards to humanity is brought to a new—but foreseeable—level, rising above commonplace greed to an inhumane extreme. The way in which human life is treated can be likened to a pet: ours to use, to maltreat, to ignore, to control, to own. Clones are means to an end, their journey to that end dependant on the size of corporations’ wallets. Here, Ishiguro emphasizes, is where a line must be drawn. Although as a modern reader one feels that, inexorably, all matters must lead to money (the revelation of such in the novel brings no surprise and is even considered typical on first inspection), this need not be. Slowly and almost agonizingly the audience is pulled through all levels of humanity, revealing a posteriori that clones are humans. And with humanity comes a responsibility, one that reaches decidedly further than next month’s bank statement.

In the clones we see ourselves: victims of a greater force whose unfulfilled potential screams bittersweet, and whose lost innocence we mourn as personal tragedy. However, Ishiguro urges his audience to see this tragedy on a larger scale: as a mass adulteration of life’s simplicity and value, its morals and beliefs, as it affects us all. For in our search for the Fountain of Youth we grow old, and in its waters we find naught but our own reflections.
-----




ps- this won't make sense unless you've read the book, by the way. [OWNED!]