Indiana University South Bend Undergraduate Research Journal
Institutionalized Oppression:
Passivity and Post-Colonialism in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go
Written by Sarah Duis
Edited by Steph Foreman
In Edward W. Said's article, "Resistance, Opposition and
Representation," he discusses the recovery of colonized spaces by
their colonized inhabitants, referring to it as ideological
resistance. Said identifies three topics that often come up in
discussion of cultural resistance. The first topic is the insistence
that a community has a right to see its history wholly; the second
topic is the idea that resistance is an alternative way of conceiving
human history; and the third topic is the pull away from separatist
nationalism toward a more integrative view of human community
and liberation (Said 97). This paper will address each of these
topics and their complex roles in the post-colonialism of Never
Let Me Go. Also discussed will be Keith McDonald's academic
article, "Days of Past Futures: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go
as 'Speculative Memoir."' McDonald's article examines the
significance of the autobiographical nature of the book, the
importance of schooling as a method of instilling passivity, and
the reader's role.
Abstract:
Japanese-born British author Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel,
Never Let Me Go, deeply criticizes the inhumanity of colonization
with the story of a group of clone children bred specifically for
the use of their body parts. While the concept of British empire is
generally thought of in the context of the seizure of property,
Never Let Me Go takes colonization to a disturbing and intimate
level that encourages the reader to not only empathize with a loss
of surroundings, but with the loss of bodily free will, equality, and
the denial of authenticity. Further, Ishiguro challenges traditional
post-colonial schools of thought that emphasize resistance by
instead illustrating the ruthless method of colonization through
pacification of its subjects.
Kazoo Ishiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go, is a novel that deeply
criticizes the inhumanity of colonization with the story of a group
of clone children bred specifically for the use of their body parts.
While the concept of empire is generally thought of in the context
of the seizure of land, Never Let Me Go takes empire to a
disturbing and intimate level that encourages the reader to not
only empathize with a loss of surroundings, but with the loss of
bodily free will, equality, and the denial of authenticity. I will
argue that Ishiguro challenges traditional post-colonial schools of
thought that emphasize active resistance by instead crafting his
own cautionary tale of a future where active resistance is not an
option, illustrating the ruthless method of colonization through
pacification of its subjects.
The first method of cultural resistance that Said discusses is "the
insistence on the right to see the community's history whole,
coherently, integrally" (97). He defines this act as a culture
reclaiming its pre-colonized language, culture, literature, and so
forth. Never Let Me Go is told from an autobiographical
standpoint, and we are intentionally removed from any context
surrounding the history of the cloning process. Also, as duplicates
of people who have their own histories, the students live in a
strange kind of genealogical vacuum. From the moment they are
born, their histories are not their own. Instead of insisting on
reclaiming their history, which arguably does not exist, the
students cling desperately to their present and banish thoughts of
the future. In McDonald's article, he points out that "the students
of Hailsham remain trapped in a state of adolescence during their
maturation into biological adulthood, unable, unschooled, and
unprepared for any semblance of an adult or free existence" (79).
This is an important concept to consider in understanding the lack
of resistant behavior in the students. Ishiguro has created an
especially oppressive empire, in which the colonized are
monitored, sheltered, and brainwashed from birth. They are
unaware of any history, culture, language, or religion outside of
the world they inhabit-a world created entirely by the unseen
forces that control them.
Much of the novel takes place in the not-so-distant future at
Hailsham, an English boarding school for children who,
unbeknownst to them for most of their childhood, are clones that
will one day be killed for the use of their organs. The novel is told
from the first-person perspective of Kathy H., an adult clone
nearing the scheduled end of her life. She reflects upon her
experiences growing up at Hailsham. Kathy H. 's perpetual
childlike and skewed perspective of the purpose of her own life is
evident in her narrative, filled with frustration, confusion, and
longing undertones of sadness. Kathy is caged mentally and
physically. Mentally, she has been raised in an environment that
has naturalized her fate, feeding into a culture of nurtured
acceptance and passivity. Physically, clear boundaries have been
set for the children of Hailsham at each stage in their lives. In
childhood, rumors abound that leaving the Hailsham grounds will
result in an ominous force severing their body parts, a chilling
allusion to their fate as forced organ donors and an example of the
level of "knowing and not knowing" discussed in the book. They
are forced to live in an unreality created by "the empire" that, for
the purposes of this novel, are the abstract forces behind the
cloning and, ultimately, the colonization of the minds and bodies
of the children.
The idea of indoctrination via education is a central theme in the
novel. Hailsham's curriculum suspiciously lacks any education
related to science or logic, instead emphasizing artwork and
poetry in an effort to distract the students and prevent them from
fully understanding their situation. The guardians, non-clone
adults who teach and oversee the children as they grow up at
Hailsham, also use specific terminology with the students from a
very young age. McDonald notes, "Normalization is evident not
least in the language that is used to describe the harvesting of the
victim's organs. The children (or captives) are described as
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Indiana University South Bend Undergraduate Research Journal
'special' and 'gifted' by their guardians (or wardens), and their
murders are described as 'completions,' a jarring reminder of ...
the ways in which language can normalize atrocities deemed
necessary in a given ideology" (78). Another example of language
that is used and consequently internalized is the term "poor
creature." While walking to a neighboring village with Ruth,
Kathy's best friend at Hailsham, Kathy notices Ruth pick up a
flyer. "I thought maybe it was some poor creature dead at her feet,
but when I came up, I saw it was a colour magazine" (144). The
advertisement, depicting a modem office with happy workers, is
what sets Ruth' s fantasy about her future as a businesswoman in
motion. Kathy uses the term "poor creature" to describe what she
thought was a dead and frozen animal that had fallen victim to the
elements it was born to thrive in. When Tommy and Kathy visit
Madame, she repeatedly calls them "poor creatures," and views
them much in the same way Kathy thought may have been on the
side of the road-subhuman victims of their surroundings that
were never meant to survive.
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passivity illustrates the extent in which Ruth has bought into the
belief that her existence beyond her donations is worthless.
It is interesting that Kathy, who often seems to be the most
passive one of the group, is angered by Ruth's forgetfulness and
marginalization of their childhood. However, considering that the
novel is a (fictional) autobiographical recounting of Kathy's life,
it becomes apparent that Kathy, unlike Ruth, is proactively
acknowledging and attempting to preserve her past and her
memories. McDonald discusses the significance of the novel ' s
autobiographical context: " In telling her story, Kathy H. is also
involved in a life writing project that will preserve the memory of
dead and dying loved ones. By incorporating them into her own
memoir . . . a symbolic binding takes place in which the
pathography acts as an elegiac act of witness and testimony" (80).
While Kathy never outwardly rebels against her assigned lot in
life, he~ autobiography is perhaps the single act of rebellion in the
entire novel , whether or not that was Kathy's intention. By
illustrating the heartbreak, hopelessness, and humanity of her
experience as a clone, her existence becomes immortalized and
accessible to all who may read it.
The second method of cultural resistance that Said discusses is
"the idea that resistance is an alternative way of conceiving
human history" (79). He describes this as using imagination to
acknowledge marginalized, suppressed, and forgotten memories
(79). We see this attempt to conceive an alternative history
through the students ' mission to find the woman that may be
Ruth's "possible," the term used for non-clones from the outside
that the students were potentially cloned from. The prospect of
seeing her possible is an important idea for Ruth, and she lives
vicariously through the notion that her model is a successful
businesswoman. This fantasy is shattered when Ruth and her
friends find the woman and, after watching her closely, decide
that the suspected woman is not Ruth's model after all. Ruth's
attitude takes a tum, and she proclaims that she and the rest of the
students have been modeled not after normal people, but the
lowest class denizens of society. "If you want to look for
possibles," says Ruth, "if you want to do it properly, then you
look in the gutter. You look in rubbish bins. Look down the toilet,
that's where you'll find where we all came from" (166). Ruth held
on to the hope that her model would be a happy and normal
woman because she knew it was as close as she would ever get to
experiencing a normal life full of freedom, exciting careers, and
the possibility of old age. The hope that her model was doing
what she herself wished to do gave her a vicarious sense of
humanity and belonging. Once the suspicion was confirmed false,
the hope of her own humanity Ruth held close was gone.
The third form of resistance Said talks about is the pull away from
separatist nationalism toward a more integrative view of human
community and human liberation. For the purposes of the novel
and this paper, the "separatist nationalism" would be the
community of the clone students. Their pull toward an integrative
human community and liberation would, theoretically, be in the
form of trying to assimilate with non-clones and fighting for their
equality amongst them. Frustratingly, we do not see the students
strive to achieve this. There is no desire for an extended
community or liberation from their isolation, but instead, a
longing for Hailsham until the end of their lives, the very
institution that conditions them to accept their fate.
After the students reach adulthood and graduate from Hailsham,
they are all eventually destined to become "carers," where they
are assigned to spend time with and subdue clones who are in the
process of their organ removal and eventual death. All carers will
eventually become "donors" themselves. On the first page of the
novel, Kathy cannot stifle her pride in her job as a successful
carer: "I ' m trying not to boast. But then I do know for a fact
they've been pleased with my work, and by and large, I have too
... okay, maybe I am boasting now. But it means a lot to me,
being able to do my work well, especially that bit about my
donors staying 'calm'" (3). Kathy's satisfaction as a carer is in
opposition to the resistance of human integration and liberation
that Said talks about. As a carer, she continues the agenda of
Hailsham in subduing clones as they experience the donations
they have been prepared for their entire lives. She even pinpoints
her satisfaction in keeping donors "calm." There can be no
argument that she is delusional, since she is aware that she will be
a donor herself one day and "complete"-the term used, as
McDonald mentions, to define what is really their systematic
murders .
The next example of Said's altered conception of history occurs
when Ruth intentionally forgets or denies details of her
experiences at Hailsham, which greatly disturbs Kathy. In Kathy's
last days at the cottages, she is reminiscing about Hailsham with
Ruth and mentions how a fellow student got in trouble for going
through a rhubarb path. "And that was when Ruth looked at me
and said 'Why? What was wrong with that?' It was just the way
she said it, suddenly so false even an onlooker, if there' d been
one, would have seen through it ... she continued pretending to
remember nothing, and I got all the more irritated" (202). Ruth
intentionally forgetting her own past is an act of perpetuating the
marginalization of her own existence, directly opposing Said's
idea of acknowledging the past in order to reclaim it. This act of
In the last pages of the novel, when Kathy is nearing the end of
her position as a carer, she says, "It's like with my memories of
Tommy and of Ruth. Once I' m able to have a quieter life, in
whichever centre they send me to, I'll have Hailsham with me,
safely in my head, and that'll be something no one can take away"
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Indiana University South Bend Undergraduate Research Journal
Never Let Me Go is a novel that, unlike many other post-colonial
novels, illustrates the tragedy of colonization through the passivity
of the colonized. While Ishiguro could have written a novel about
clones who rebel against the shadowy empire that has created and
commodified them, the reader must helplessly watch as Ruth,
Tommy, Kathy, and their friends are mentally and emotionally
unable to fight the oppression that has seeped into every facet of
their existence. They have become extensions of the empire that
created them, taught to oppress themselves and each other by
forgetting or altering their pasts, feeling pride in their oppression,
and creating distractions from the truth and reality of their futures.
Ishiguro's use of the body as colonized space complicates and
broadens traditional arguments pertaining to colonization. The
body and mind are the ultimate private property, and Ishiguro's
novel is a cautionary tale of how science and technology may be
used to traverse the only territories more personal than land. In the
21 st century, where technology and science are more prolific and
advanced than ever before, complex and troubling moral
questions arise that must be addressed. Never Let Me Go dares to
ask where colonialism may be headed next, and what a future that
foundationally prevents Said's proposed methods of active
resistance may look like.
(287). On one hand, it is arguable that this fixation on Hailsham
exists because it is the only semblance of normality and happiness
that the students were able to experience in their lives. However,
they come to learn the darker truth about Hailsham that had been
kept hidden during their years there when they go to visit Madame
to ask about the rumor that clones could request a deferment for
their donations if they could prove they were in love. In
explaining the reason for the encouragement of artistic expression
at the school , Madame says, "We took away your art because we
thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we
did it to prove you had souls at alI'' (260). This chilling statement
casts a disturbing light onto the students ' childhoods at Hailsham.
In learning this information, there is an opportunity for Kathy and
Tommy to grasp, perhaps more fully than ever, the role that
Hailsham played in subduing and deceiving them.
Tommy has a moment of clarity on the drive back from
Madame's. On page 273 he says, "I think Miss Lucy was right.
Not Miss Emily," referring to a rogue guardian who openly
believed that the students should know the reality of their
situation. Tommy then proceeds to get out of the car and explode
in a fit of aimless rage, like he used to at Hailsham when he was
much younger. After Kathy subdues him, she says, "Maybe the
reason you used to get like that was because at some level you
always knew," to which Tommy replies, "Don't think so Kath .
No, it was always just me. Me being an idiot. That's all it ever
was .. . But that's a funny idea, maybe I did know, somewhere
deep down. Something the rest of you didn' t" (275). At this
moment, after learning of the sham their lives have been, Tommy
and Kathy could have chosen to drive off and live under new
names, and try to live out full lives, free of donations. Instead,
they accept what they have learned and go on to play out the bleak
lives that have been predetermined for them.
Works Cited
lshiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. New York: Vintage
International, 2006. Print.
McDonald, Keith. "Days of Past Futures: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never
Let Me Go As 'Speculative Memoir'." Biography: An
Interdisciplinary Quarterly 30. l (2007): 74-83 . MLA
International Bibliography. Web. 7 Dec. 2011.
Said, Edward W. "Resistance, Opposition and
Representation." Culture and Imperialism (1993): 95-98.
Print.
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