Never Let Me Go Quotations Flashcards

Question

“Suddenly he was…

Answer 1

“Suddenly he was really child-like again, with no front whatsoever, and I could see something dark and troubling gathering behind his eyes” - Ch16 - This happened just after Ruth said she and Kathy thought his animals were silly. - This shows that Tommy had to put on a 'front' to protect himself from the outside world. It is Kathy's apparent betrayal that causes it to break, showing how much Kathy's approval meant to Tommy.

Answer 2

“I’ve got to tell you this. I wouldn’t forgives myself if I kept quiet much longer.” - Ch17

Answer 3

“After you left, she got worse. You know, always telling everyone what to do.” - Ch18

Answer 4

“It was like someone coming along with a pair of shears and snipping the balloon strings just where they entwined above the man’s fist. Once that happened, there’d be no real sense in which those balloons belonged with each other any more.” - Ch18

Answer 5

“Not so long ago, the woods must have extended further, because you could see here and there ghostly dead trunks poking out” - Ch19

Answer 6

"I could now see how its paint was cracking, and how the timber frames of the little cabin were crumbling away. " - Ch19

Answer 7

"I was looking out of the window and everything was flooded […] and I could see rubbish floating by [,…but] it was nice and tranquil, just like it is here." - Ch19 - The 'rubbish' could symbolise the clones, with the 'tranquil[ity]' symbolising society's indifference.

Answer 8

"After all, it’s what we’re *supposed* to be doing, isn’t it?" - Ch19

Answer 9

"You see it in films sometimes, when one person’s pointing a gun at another person, and the one with the gun’s making the other one do all kinds of things. Then suddenly there’s a mistake, a tussle, and the gun’s with the second person. And the second person looks at the first person with a gleam, a kind of can’t-believe-my-luck expression that promises all kinds of vengeance." - Ch19 - 'Making the other one do all kinds of things' is comparable to Ruth's manipulation – we see just how powerful it was here to Kathy, since she would compare it to someone pointing a 'gun' at her head. - This is a highly cinematic metaphorical description (quite literally, since 'you see it in films') which is ironic because what's happening in reality is that both of them are seated in a car doing very little. This hyperbolic metaphor demonstrates the sheer amount of psychological action and manipulation occurring between Kathy and Ruth that could lend itself to a cinematic film scene.

Answer 10

"The drugs and the pain and the exhaustion" - Ch1

Answer 11

"He wanted not just to hear about Hailsham, but to *remember* Hailsham, just like it had been his own childhood" - Ch1

Answer 12

"'The reason they go for Tommy's because he's a layabout.'// Then everyone was talking at once about how Tommy never even tried to be creative" - Ch1 - Introduces importance of creativity in Hailsham

Answer 13

"With a big open smile that immediately irritated me. [...] I felt like saying [...] but [...]" - Ch2

Answer 14

"The usual stuff – weird things in his bed, a worm in his cereal" - Ch2

Answer 15

“Virtually everyone shot daggers at Polly, before turning eagerly to Miss Lucy” - Ch4

Answer 16

- “[Moira B was really a] natural ally” - Ch5 - “[Kathy would be Ruth’s] natural successor” - Ch9 - "Like when you made a move in chess" - "When one person's pointing a gun at the other person"

Answer 17

[Ch5] - Ruth acted as if she knew what was going on around chess games, making comments ('amazingly dim') - Kathy bought a chess set and asked Ruth to teach her - Ruth always 'pretended she had something else really urgent to do' - She eventually taught Kathy, but making up the rules – Kathy noticed and stormed off - Implicitly because of this, Kathy was 'expelled' from the secret guard. - Moira B who also was previously expelled, dismissed it as 'just another of Ruth's made-up things', which made Kathy cross.

Answer 18

"All this effort, all this planning, just to upset my dearest friend" - Ch5

Answer 19

[Ch5] - Ruth seemed 'on the verge of tears', and then 'walked off into the rain' [Ch6] - To make up Kathy acted as if Ruth was important to Miss Geraldine: 'If *Ruth* goes and asks Miss Geraldine, then we'd stand a chance [...] I could see she was pleased', '[Kathy] slow[ed] right down so that Ruth [...] could instead pass through the door beside Miss Geraldine' - 'Little things like this might have pleased Ruth, but they were still far away from what had actually happened', '[Once when Kathy was thinking about this situation,] a heavy mix of remorse and frustration brought me virtually to tears' - One day, the perfect chance came about, and when someone asked Ruth where she got the pencil case from, Kathy intervened, saying it was 'a *big* mystery' - Ruth now seemed really 'pleased', and would always be 'looking around for some opportunity to do something nice, something really special for [Kathy]' Talk about how ironic it is that this entire incident occurred without Ruth ever lying she got the pencil case from Miss Geraldine, or Kathy ever accusing her of seeing Ruth's purchase in the records, then manage to fall out over it, and eventually make up, without even ever mentioning the whole thing to each other directly.

Answer 20

"There was even a rumour than some classic books – like the Sherlock Holmes ones – weren't in our library because the main characters smoked too much" - Ch6

Answer 21

"The earlier years [...] tend to blur into each other as a kind of golden time" - Ch7 "But those last years [...] were more serious, and in some ways darker [...] like day moving into night" - Ch7

Answer 22

- "Mad animal" - Ch1 - "[Miss Lucy] had a squat, almost bulldoggy figure" - Ch3 - "[Miss Lucy] looked like a crouching animal waiting to pounce" - Ch7, before her revelation - Tommy's animals

Answer 23

"Before you're old, before you're even middle-aged, you'll start to donate your vital organs. That's what each of you was created to do." - Ch7

Answer 24

"If it did come up, people tended to say: 'Well, so what? We already knew all that.' But that had been Miss Lucy's point exactly." - Ch7 "[Tommy] came up with a theory[: ] the guardians had, throughout all our years at Hailsham, timed very carefully and deliberately everything they told us, so that we were always just too young to understand. [...] In other words, [...] the guardians managed to smuggle into our heads a lot of the basic facts about our futures." - Ch7

Answer 25

Tommy: rage, honesty Kathy: avoid, euphemise Ruth: control others, otherwise break down Other students: dark humour, e.g. unzipping incident

Answer 26

"We've both done daft things to hurt each other, but it's enough now. [...] The scores are even again." - Ch9

Answer 27

"Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory."

Answer 28

"The everyday slave"

Answer 29

"When she spoke again it was in an entirely new voice." - Ch10, after Kathy is caught out pressing Ruth about why she copies the veterans "Then she added, in quite a different voice:" - Ch10

Answer 30

"It was betrayal" - Ch11

Answer 31

- Ruth and Kathy often had conversations in the Cottages where they 'exchanged [their] deepest feelings'. - One conversation, Ruth revealed she'd noticed the veterans didn't have collections; 'it wasn't normal'. - She then got Keffers to take the possessions away. - Ruth noted that Kathy on the other hand was 'never embarrassed about [her] collection and [she] kept it'; Ruth then said 'I wish now I'd done that too'. - This shows how differently Kathy and Ruth reacted to them leaving Hailsham, to their past memories, and how they interact with others.

Answer 32

[Talking about possibles and dream jobs] “Quite a few students wanted to be drivers” - Ch12

Answer 33

“It showed this beautifully modern open-plan office” - Ch12

Answer 34

“Ruth was making a big effort to present not just herself, but all of us, in the right way to Chrissie and Rodney” - Ch13 - 'Right' is very specific – it implies a singular correct answer. The fact that Ruth should know what the 'right' way even would be is unusual, since a 'right' way shouldn't exist. The fact that it is Ruth deciding what the 'right' way would be asserts her dominance and need for control.

Answer 35

“‘I don’t remember it,’ Tommy said flatly. [… Ruth said to Chrissie] ‘What you’ve got to realise is that even though Tommy was at Hailsham, he isn’t like a real Hailsham student. He was left out of everything and people were always laughing at him.’” - Ch13 - This is demonstrates again Tommy's honest approach, but also shows the repercussions of this honesty, as honesty is shunned at Hailsham – they 'sheltered', 'fooled' the clones. By calling him not 'a real Hailsham student' puts him out of alignment with this culture of avoidance and demonstrates how he does not conform.

Answer 36

“But now, in that gallery, the woman [Ruth’s possible] was too close, much closer than we’d ever really wanted.” - Ch14

Answer 37

“As I was hurrying over to help him out, the lady asked: ‘Are you art students?’ ‘Not exactly,’” - Ch14

Answer 38

"Everything suddenly felt perfect: an hour set aside, stretching ahead of us, and there wasn't a better way to spend it. I had to really hold myself back from giggling stupidly, or jumping up and down on the pavement like a little kid." - Ch15 - This demonstrates how happy Kathy is being with Tommy when Ruth is out of the picture. - The fact that she felt like a 'little kid' could possibly reflect how this compares to her feelings when she was younger at Hailsham. - Kathy feels the need to 'hold [her]self back'; this contrasts with Tommy's 'open' approach to feelings, and how much Kathy suppresses them and puts them off.

Answer 39

"When you lost it, I used to think about [...] what it would be like, if I found it and brought it to you, what you'd say, your face, all of that." - Ch15 - This is very open and honest of Tommy – he is indirectly revealing how he felt about Kathy in Hailsham. Kathy, on the other hand, has never really addressed directly how she felt about Tommy, despite there being much evidence that she had feelings for him, from making an effort to see he was okay in Ch1, to it being 'perfect' and her nearly 'giggling stupidly' when they got to spend time alone together without Ruth, to her getting emotional after Ruth's confession and them finally being together after Ruth dies, wishing they could've had more time. Perhaps it is Kathy's avoidance of the truth that allowed Ruth to step in between them and meant they couldn't be together sooner. - The repetition of 'you' and 'your' emphasises how much he thought about Kathy.

Answer 40

"I knew Ruth would find out sooner or later, but I didn't want her to find out just yet. On that journey home, with the darkness setting in over those long empty roads, it felt like the three of us were close again and I didn't want anything to come along and break that mood." - Ch15 - Kathy 'knew' that Ruth would find out, and we can anticipate that the longer she leaves it, the bigger of a secret it will become, and the worse the consequences will be when Ruth does find out. However, it is this postponing of the inevitable that Kathy does throughout the novel, leading to worse consequences when she does address the truth. - The 'darkness setting in' foreshadows darkly through pathetic fallacy of how things are only going to get worse between the three of them, along with the foreshadowing that 'Ruth would find out', which is particularly significant coming from a retrospective narrator, who knows that this is true. We now wait in dread for the moment that things go wrong, foreshadowed heavily by the end of this chapter.

Answer 41

"It was like being given a maths problem when your brain's exhausted[...]. Something in me just gave up." - Ch16

Answer 42

- "Ruth said in a mock whisper: 'Tommy's big Gallery theory!" - "Sweet Boy" - "sweety gums" - "sweety" - "in front of our dear friend [...] our dear Kathy" (Ch16)

Answer 43

"What's the rhubarb patch got to do with any of this? [...] What's the rhubarb patch got to do with anything?" - Ch17 - Subtle reminder that Kathy's narration is not verbatim.

Answer 44

"But I know he doesn't see you like, you know, a proper girlfriend. [...] Besides, you know how Tommy is. He can be fussy." –> "It wasn't long after that I made my decision" - Ch17

Answer 45

"We hugged, quite spontaneously, not so much to comfort one another, but as a way of affirming Hailsham" - Ch18

Answer 46

"Yeah okay, we don't need to hear every last thing about her" [...] "That's exactly what I was about to say..." [...] "My heart had done a little leap, because [...] with that little laugh of agreement, it felt as though Tommy and I had come close together after all the years" - Compare this exchange with Kathy and Tommy feeling close on the Norfolk trip: Kathy only feels close to Tommy when he dismisses Ruth; Kathy is obviously still treating this like a 'game'. Any moment they have together that excludes Ruth is one that makes her heart 'leap'. This both foreshadows Ruth's confession of keeping them apart (as up to this point she has been the only factor stopping them being together) and further demonstrates Kathy's unreliability in terms of avoidance of the truth, since it is highly likely she has been in love with Tommy throughout the novel, yet refuses to admit it.

Answer 47

- 'donations' - 'recovery centres' - 'to complete' - 'now Ruth has gone'

Answer 48

"Little islands of lucidity donors sometimes get in the midst of their ghastly battles" - Ch19 - Only bother to use if supporting 'the drugs and the pain and the exhaustion', and use to show how much Kathy avoids the reality of donations.

Answer 49

"She saw and decided in a second *what we were*, because you could see her stiffen – as if a pair of large spiders was set to crawl towards her." - Ch21

Answer 50

Tommy insisted the painting was of Hailsham, of 'the bit round the back of the duck pond'. Kathy, however, does not remember this, and is convinced it is 'just a bit of countryside'. Tommy replies with 'you must be able to remember'. This is parallel to Kathy refusing to believe Ruth could have forgotten about the Rhubarb patch, and since Kathy is the one who endlessly goes over memories, it is strange that she might have forgotten this. This shows us just how personal memory is, and just how differently each of our own records of the past can become.

Answer 51

"Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?" - Ch21 - The constant separation of the 'we' and the 'you' truly isolates the clones from society.

Answer 52

"If they're so foolish, let them believe it" – Ch22

Answer 53

"So my dears, we have a few minutes more" [because it turned out not to be the removal men at the door] - Ch22 - This further increases the sense of panic with running out of time, as surely they must have to leave any second now – they have been given too many chances. - The fact that an old cabinet is being prioritised over the knowledge of the clones shows how worthless they are as individuals, even to Miss Emily.

Answer 54

Madame: "Creatures", Miss Emily "Students" - Madame was never a guardian, so is a better representative of how the outside world view the clones. As Madame calls them 'creatures', it is likely the rest of the world see them that way too.

Answer 55

"Clones" is only mentioned twice in the novel, and only in direct speech, once in Ruth's outburst, and secondly in Miss Emily's revelation.

Answer 56

"How can you ask such a world that has come to regard cancer as curable, [...] to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days?" - Ch22 - From the readers' perspective, this ironically does seem a 'dark' society as it is.

Answer 57

"You were lucky pawns" - Ch22 - Link to chess analogy, how Ruth and Kathy were metaphorically playing mental chess against each other, indicating their psychological sophistication. However, here, they are not the players of chess, but the pieces – the weakest, sacrificial pieces.

Answer 58

"Sometimes that meant we kept things from you, lied to you. Yes, in many ways we *fooled* you. But we sheltered you during those years and we gave you your childhoods." - Ch22

Answer 59

"Very good. A mind reader. You should be on stage." - Ch22 - This isn't outstandingly impressive – it's the only notable moment they had together. However, Madame regards any kind of human-like intuition from the clones as what should be impossible – she should be a magician. - It links to societies fears of the clones becoming superhuman as well.

Answer 60

- "Raging, shouting, flinging his fists and kicking out." - "I tried to run to him, but the mud sucked my feet down." - "Caked in mud and distorted in fury" - "Just holding each other, while the wind kept blowing and blowing at us, tugging our clothes, and for a moment, it seemed like we were holding onto each other because that was the only way to stop us being swept away into the night."

Answer 61

"Because at some level you always knew" "No, it was always just me. Me being an idiot." "But that's a funny idea. Maybe I did know" - Ch22

Answer 62

"These two people in the water, trying to hold on to each other, [...] but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. [...] It's a shame Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives."

Answer 63

- "There was a fence keeping me from stepping into the field, with two lines of barbed wire" - "All sorts of rubbish had caught and tangled" - "I [...] imagined this spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up." - "I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd maybe wave, even call. The fantasy never got beyond that – I didn't let it – and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn't sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be." - Ch23

Answer 64

"To create this world that seems very strange and distant initially, but then hopefully the reader would start to recognise it as their own story"

Answer 65

"I shook her off roughly and glared at her through the tears. "It’s too late for that. Way too late."" - Ch19

Answer 66

"But I could have done something. I could have challenged Ruth [...]. I could even have gone up to Tommy and hugged him, right there in front of Ruth." "But I didn't say or do anything" - Ch16

Answer 67

“Shadowy objects in test tubes”

Never Let Me Go Quotations Flashcards

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