Never Let Me Go - Setting Essay Flashcards
Moving on from Hailsham
“There have been times over the years when I’ve tried to leave Hailsham behind, when I’ve told myself I shouldn’t look back so much. But then there came a point when I just stopped resisting.”
“There have been times over the years when I’ve tried to leave Hailsham behind, when I’ve told myself I shouldn’t look back so much. But then there came a point when I just stopped resisting.”
Hailsham was a home for the clones because it was all they knew for their entire childhood. Clones were given a sense of identity at Hailsham through their collections and art, and a sense of belonging through the family created - guardians were parental figures to them and the other students felt like family also. During her adulthood, Kathy finds herself looking back at Hailsham a lot and missing it, frequently searching for familiarities of it wherever she is at the time. Hailsham holds importance to its students because, unlike other schools, it provides them with basic human essentials even though they are viewed as inhumane things by the public. When they leave to live at places like the Cottages, they lose these things and so find the memory of Hailsham a comfort.
Medicals at Hailsham
“I don’t know how it was where you were, but at Hailsham we had to have some form of medical almost every week-“
“I don’t know how it was where you were, but at Hailsham we had to have some form of medical almost every week-“
At Hailsham, students are treated very different from how they are in schools in our world. Medicals are only really common when you are young and in important growth and development stages but at Hailsham these medicals are for all ages. The importance of health at Hailsham makes us put into perspective the treatment of clones due to their purpose. Due to them being created for organ harvesting, ‘normal’ humans are very strict on keeping them healthy so go to extensive lengths for such an inhumane cause that they have resorted to thinking of clones as anything but human and sometimes even excuse that they are real. In contrast to how important the clones are they are treated horrible, and that makes us feel terrible injustice for our main characters as they are forced into programmes of organ donating that saves peoples lives and are still treated horrendously.
Creativity at Hailsham
“A lot of the time, how you were regarded at Hailsham, how much you were liked and respected, had to do with how good you were at ‘creating’.”
“A lot of the time, how you were regarded at Hailsham, how much you were liked and respected, had to do with how good you were at ‘creating’.”
Priorities at Hailsham are far different to the schools we are used to. They see higher importance in creativity than they do education, and that isn’t only within the school system but with the children as well. If you are creative and good at producing things with it, people like you and respect you. We see the opposite with Tommy in the beginning of the novel when he focuses on art yet isn’t great at it and is a bully victim by his peers, being left out from football among other things - this is the cause of many of his anger outbursts. The differences in our schools to clone schools helps us to see the different treatments of them to ‘normal’ people. It is further proven when later in the novel the reason for Hailsham encouraging creativity and collecting what they produced was revealed. They did this to prove that clones had souls. This solidifies the idea that clones are treated differently because the public has decided that they are soulless beings when in fact they are just as human as ‘real’ humans which is proven through their actions and reactions, how they crave love and intimacy, and show raw human emotion.
Missing the Guardians
“If we were honest, though, particularly near the beginning, most of us would have admitted missing the guardians. A few of us, for a time, even tried to think of Keffers as a sort of guardian, but he was having none of it.”
“If we were honest, though, particularly near the beginning, most of us would have admitted missing the guardians. A few of us, for a time, even tried to think of Keffers as a sort of guardian, but he was having none of it.”
Hailsham created a good start of life for the clones that attended it, giving them a sense of identity and belonging through the things they gave them and encouraged; collections, creativity and a family. The Guardians were parental role models for the clones at this school, never being overly comfortable with them but they were all the clones had to consider as parents. When the clones left Hailsham they missed the comfortability and safety of the place and started to look for hints of it elsewhere. Keffers was the man who ran the Cottages but wasn’t fond of being looked at like that by the clones so that was a short lasting hope. On the other hand Hailsham had given it’s students one last assignment to complete for after they left and that was an essay which many of the students worked on at first but their attention slowly faded from it the longer they had been from Hailsham. No student finished it, not even Kathy who was desperate to keep connected to the only place she knew to be as home.
Ruth moving on at the Cottages
“You’re upset because I’ve managed to move on, make new friends. Some of the veterans. hardly remember your name, and who can blame them? You never talk to anyone unless they’re Hailsham. But you expect me to hold your hand the whole time. We’ve been here nearly two months now.”
“You’re upset because I’ve managed to move on, make new friends. Some of the veterans hardly remember your name, and who can blame them? You never talk to anyone unless they’re Hailsham. But you expect me to hold your hand the whole time. We’ve been here nearly two months now.”
Kathy had an attachment to Hailsham. All she knew whilst growing up was that boarding school for clones, so Hailsham symbolises a home for her. It gave her a sense of belonging and gave her a family. So, when she moves to the Cottages she finds it hard to adapt to the new surroundings because of the comfort of her past living facilities. Ruth on the other hand has found herself changing so that she fits into the Cottages and with the new people there and Kathy isn’t happy about this because Ruth is beginning to lie and pretend to do this. We begin to see Kathy and Ruth’s friendship fall apart as Ruth becomes more accepted by the veterans whilst Kathy shrivels away from veterans and only holds conversations with anyone she had previously known from Hailsham. We see two opposing characters here; one who is confident and outspoken, whilst the other is observant and keeps to themselves. At times we come to be frustrated with these characters due to how strongly opposite they are and how difficult they are to understand yet we all act in similar ways.
Tommy looking for Kathy’s lost tape in Norfolk
“Oh, I might as well tell you. In that shop we were in, they had this shelf with loads of records and tapes, so I was looking for the one you lost that time. Do you remember, Kath? Except I couldn’t remember what it was anymore.”
“Oh, I might as well tell you. In that shop we were in, they had this shelf with loads of records and tapes. so I was looking for the one you lost that time. Do you remember, Kath? Except I couldn’t remember what it was anymore.”
The Judy Bridgewater tape symbolised Kathy’s innocence in the beginning of the novel, how she longed for an intimate relationship and a family of her own but would never truly have that. In the second part of the novel, when Kathy and Tommy find this tape years after it went missing, what it symbolises changes. From this point on it begins to symbolise the love shared between Tommy and Kathy, how they rekindled their connection during their time in Norfolk and tried to hide it away from Ruth to prevent any disruption like there had been in Hailsham. The characters do not get to be together until they are older, Tommy now being the donor that Kathy is caring for. On every car ride during her carer life, Kathy listened to that tape, reminiscing about her friends and life before her preplanned life began to take place.
Kathy enjoys being alone
“Even the solitude, I’ve actually grown to quite like… But I do like the feeling of getting into my little car, knowing for the next couple of hours I’ll have only the roads, the big grey sky and my daydreams for company.”
“Even the solitude, I’ve actually grown to quite like… But I do like the feeling of getting into my little car, knowing for the next couple of hours I’ll have only the roads, the big grey sky and my daydreams for company.”
Kathy was always known as a character that enjoyed spending time on her own more than she did in other peoples company. She only ever went out of her way to be with a person if it was Tommy or Ruth, people she had had time to build meaningful relationships with. In the final part of the novel Kathy begins to truly find herself as she is forced to spend more time alone during her time as a carer, travelling all up and down the country to tend to her patients. She enjoys having this time on her own so that she can think. Kathy has always been very observant and watched and analysed the people around her, and now, she could travel the country and think about it all deeply, reflecting on her life before this moment. Clones are isolated from the outside world but this is forced, whereas Kathy chooses to isolate herself from all other clones wherever she can. There is a main theme of isolation in this novel which helps us to form a deeper level of frustration and sympathy for our characters through whichever way it has been explored.
The diving board
“Each time I see it, I can’t help picturing a swimmer taking a dive off the top only to crash into the cement.”
