Never Let Me Go Context

Question 1

when was Dolly the Sheep cloned?

Answer 1

1997

Question 2

Who clones Dolly the Sheep?

Answer 2

the Roslin Institute in Scotland

Question 3

why was the cloning of Dolly the Sheep significant?

Answer 3

This was the first cloning of a mammal and raised concerns about how far science would go with the technology.

Question 4

when were human embryonic stem cells cloned?

Answer 4

1998

Question 5

how were human embryonic stem cells cloned?

Answer 5

In 1998, the detailed study of mouse stem cells led to the discovery of a method to obtain stem cells from human embryos and grow the cells in a lab

Question 6

why was the cloning of human embryonic stem cells significant?

Answer 6

This caused a great deal of concern amongst certain groups who were worried about what this might lead to in terms of human cloning, use of DNA, and the ethics of cloning.

Question 7

when did Richard Seed state his intention to clone a human before any laws could be passed?

Answer 7

1998

Question 8

what did Richard Seed aim to do?

Answer 8

in 1998, Richard Seed (American physicist) stated his intention to clone a human before any laws could be passed.

Question 9

what was there a shortage of in the early 21st century?

Answer 9

organ donors

Question 10

when was NLMG published?

Answer 10

2005

Question 11

when did the UN call for a ban on human cloning?

Answer 11

2005

Question 12

why did the UN call for a ban on human cloning?

Answer 12

called it ‘contrary to human dignity.’

Question 13

where did Ishiguro move from?

Answer 13

Japan to England

Question 14

how old was Ishiguro when he moved to England?

Answer 14

5

Question 15

how did Ishiguro’s move to England from Japan affect him?

Answer 15

Ishiguro has talked on a number of occasions about the isolating experience of attending a school where he was the only non-white person.

Question 16

where did Ishiguro work before becoming a writer?

Answer 16

he worked for a homeless charity, as well as being a social worker.

Question 17

where did Ishiguro claim that Kathy is narrating the story to another clone?

Answer 17

In a BBC Radio 4 interview in 2021

Question 18

what did Ishiguro say he was interested in, in contrast to traditional dystopian texts?

Answer 18

Ishiguro has stated in an interview that, unlike many other dystopian texts, he was not interested in the plight of the ‘brave slave’ but rather how easily people accept their fate and do not try to ‘escape’

Question 19

where did Ishiguro’s parents grow up?

Answer 19

in WWII Japan

Question 20

why is it significant that Ishiguro’s parents grew up in WWII Japan?

Answer 20

they lived in a society that went along with fascist views after the country allied itself with the Nazis.

Question 21

what is Social Bonding Theory?

Answer 21

• Developed in the 1960s by Albert Bandura
• States that individuals develop who they are through environmental factors, namely the imitations of role models

Question 22

who developed Social Bonding Theory?

Answer 22

Albert Bandura

Question 23

when did Social Bonding Theory develop?

Answer 23

1960s

Question 24

what does Ishiguro say about Kathy and the tape, and the fact that the clones cannot have children?

Answer 24

• uses it to emphasise the clones’ innocence
• “I wanted Kathy to mention this as something that doesn’t greatly move her one way or the other.[…] This is one of a number of truths that the children in NLMG assimilate incrementally over years, rather than as a revelation, as they drift through a hinterland of ‘knowing and not knowing’. I wanted that for Kathy and her friends infertility would never become a huge matter at the fore of their minds. They never consciously anguish about it, never mind protest publicly. And yet I wanted the sense that it would steadily, stealthily, come to have a massive impact on their lives – on their attitudes, their decisions, even their feelings for one another. Cut off from the basic cycle of reproduction, this is another weapon denied to them in the face of mortality. “

Question 24

which novel influenced Ishiguro as he was writing NLMG?

Answer 24

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (dysopian) written in 2004

Question 25

what did Ishiguro want to convey via Miss Lucy's outburst?

Answer 25

"here’s another huge truth about their fate – perhaps the most fundamental one – which the children receive not with horror, but almost like it’s another piece of routine educational knowledge imparted in class. This may echo, I felt, the way many of us first ‘heard about’ mortality; how we assimilated the news that all of us – our parents, even we as young children – were on an inescapable journey to ageing, decline and death. [...] By creating a world in which young people face the reckonings of people usually much older – who go through the average lifespan in around thirty years instead of seventy, eighty or ninety - I thought readers might glimpse with fresh intensity something which had become so familiar as to be almost invisible."

Question 26

Why may Ishiguro's life experience have led him to present to Cottages in the way he did?

Answer 26

- Much like the people Ishiguro would work with as a social worker, the clones experience neglect - Ishiguro had experience working with people ostracised and neglected by society, with a similar sense of lack of belonging

Question 27

what did Ishiguro want to convey through the possibles?

Answer 27

"Cut off in one direction by the inability to have children, our characters appear also to have the path behind them shut off by not having parents, let alone ancestors. But unlike with infertility, Kathy and her peers do give conscious thought to their ‘parents’. I felt that the emotional need for the sense of a parent would exist independently of missing comfort and support on a day-by-day basis: the idea of what one might have inherited; the sense of one’s identity. Shame or pride could derive from confronting one’s parent, and so the idea of actively searching for one’s ‘possible’ is as frightening as it is tempting.'

Question 28

how is the idea of social bonding theory represented in NLMG?

Answer 28

- the clones imitate each other and create their own norms; the exclusion of Tommy, Miss Geraldine's protectors, Ruth and the veterans - The clones imitate TV shows at the cottages - the clones imitate and learn from the guardians at Hailsham instead of becoming replicas of the people they are based on - HOWEVER, the characterisation of Tommy and Kathy's defense of him do not fit this