Blog #5: Kendall Butt

I have chose to write about the novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro for the research paper. I have yet to finish the novel though; I am about 2/3 of the way through it. As far as I have read the novel tells the tale of a dystopian society in which certain children are raised in secluded English boarding schools outside of the rest of society. They have no parents, instead they are cloned from someone who lives a "normal" life in soceity. The vast majority of what I have read has been memories of the protagonist (Kathy's) childhood. The plot has consisted of numerous detail anecdotes of Kathy's life at Hailsham--the boarding school she grew up in. The memories are very mysterious and thought evoking, as at the time Kathy was young and did not fully understand what her life was destined for. So far from these various memories I can infer that these children are a minority of the population who are raised with a purpose to benefit the greater of society. They are taught from a young age that they are all infertile, which is just one of the numerous ways that they differ from others. In addition to this, they are all raised with a vague understanding that they will one day grow up to become donors, or carers, as they call them. They will donate their organs to the rest of the population, but to the extent in which these donations occur it seems the children are not in the know. They are basically created and raised for a specific purpose, though through their adolescence they are only given bits of information about what their lives will specifically entail. Through understanding the basic plot of the novel it is easy to see why this is a dystopian fiction. It would be highly unlikable to live in a society not only where people are able to be cloned, but that these clones will be raised with no chance of surviving until they grow old--they will donate their organs until they cannot function any longer, most likely before the age of 35. These children are trapped in that they are still real humans whether they are clones or not, but their basic human rights are denied. I feel that psychoanalytical criticism, specially Freudian theory, will work best to analyze this novel. With so much emphasis on Kathy's memories, of what she represses/does not repress, that I am thinking this will be the only theoretical lens I will have to choose from. I have done a bit of basic research such as collecting various articles about the novel--the main reason I chose it is because I was able to easily find information on it. I have found many articles on EBSCO and plan to search the other databases in the MiraCosta Library.

http://web.ebscohost.com.prox.miracosta.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=87901f7b-e58c-4c45-906d-08b7bb81fc5e%40sessionmgr112&hid=127

http://web.ebscohost.com.prox.miracosta.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=87901f7b-e58c-4c45-906d-08b7bb81fc5e%40sessionmgr112&vid=5&hid=127

http://go.galegroup.com.prox.miracosta.edu/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=RELEVANCE&inPS=true&prodId=LitRC&userGroupName=ocea63505&tabID=T001&searchId=R1&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=1&contentSet=GALE%7CA172905570&&docId=GALE|A172905570&docType=GALE&role=LitRC