Never Let Me Go

“This was all a long time ago so I might have some of it wrong.” 

The opening line of the second chapter confirms the suspicions that Kathy establishes in the first. She operates as an unreliable narrator. The story is not necessarily an objective truth, but it is history as Kathy remembers it. The events, the emotions, and the results are products of Kathy’s interpretation, so Tommy and Ruth may disagree on the version of history as told by just one member of their group. The unreliable narrator informs the reader that events are subjective and possibly incomplete memories rather than an authentic, omniscient, and objective retelling of events. 

“She was quiet, but she was shaking.” 

Miss Lucy’s burning rage confuses Kathy and Tommy. They sense that she has something to say, some great secret about the nature of their existence, but they cannot begin to understand what it might be. The quiet shaking by Miss Lucy reveals the contrast between the lives of the children and those from the outside world. The children are fully immersed in the world of donations and cannot imagine any other form of existence. For someone from the outside, the concept is enough to make them furious. Miss Lucy’s conundrum fills her with the kind of emotion that Tommy and Kathy may never experience. 

“I accepted the invisible rein she was holding out.” 

One of Kathy’s earliest memories of Ruth involves the two young girls playing together with imaginary horses. The imaginary horses are a neat encapsulation of the predicament faced by every Hailsham student. Their lives are filled with an invisible, powerful force that they do not truly understand but that they must fully accept. The game they play on the invisible horses is enjoyable because they play together. Ruth, Tommy, and Kathy just about get through their lives as donors and carers because they are together. They accept the unseen reins of their lives and try to play the game, even though it is ultimately out of their control. 

“I now felt awful, and I was confused.” 

Kathy plots for days about the best way to expose Ruth’s lies. She makes her move and is proved right, but the feeling of triumph does not come. Kathy is hit by a feeling of regret and shame. She cannot understand why she acted so viciously toward the girl who is supposedly her best friend. The complicated dynamic between Ruth and Kathy is exposed. Ruth is sincere in her willingness to hurt people, while Kathy struggles with the consequences of her actions. Kathy can sometimes think like Ruth, but she can never truly be like her. 

“It’s an object, like a brooch or a ring, and especially now Ruth has gone, it’s become one of my most precious possessions.” 

The references to Ruth’s death are inserted into the narrative without much fanfare. Kathy narrates the story from a time after her friend has died, and the book is a meditation on their relationship. The casual way in which Ruth’s death is mentioned reveals the way the Hailsham students are forced to think about death. The concept of death is a constant burden in their lives. Their entire purpose is to extend the life of another person rather than to enjoy their own lives. Death is such a common, inevitable, and nearby aspect of the Hailsham experience that Kathy cannot think about death as grand. The characters’ lives are cheap in a narrative sense, and this is reflected in the prose.  

“It’s possible the guardians managed to smuggle into our heads a lot of basic facts about our futures.” 

The indoctrination of the Hailsham students begins early and is indicative of a larger system to normalize the organ donation method. The students are taught about the reason for their existence from a young age, before they’re able to understand the true meaning of the information. The ease with which the system functions suggests that the people who control the society have finely tuned the approach. The clone can never become pregnant, but the ideas are planted inside their minds like a pregnancy. The ideas gestate over a long period of time until they are born, fully formed and real. 

“They don’t want us doing it here, because it’s too much hassle for them.” 

Ruth’s explanation for the way sex is discussed by the guardians could just as easily apply to many aspects of the strained relationship between the adults and the children at Hailsham. The guardians do not teach the children everything about the outside world or the real nature of donation because to do so would be “too much hassle for them” (61). The guardians just want to focus on their jobs and not grapple with the larger moral question of their role in a strange, complicated system. They teach what they have to but do not want the children thinking too much about donations or completing, at least until they leave Hailsham. Just like sex, such matters just make the guardians’ lives more complicated. 

“Okay, it sounds a stupid way to listen to music, but it created a really good feeling.” 

Like everything else in the lives of the Hailsham students, the way they listen to music is uncanny and brief. They develop a routine of passing the headphones of a cassette player around in a circle, with each person listening to 20 seconds of the song. This method is a reflection of their lifecycles. The students only have access to a brief window of art and life. They are not permitted to experience the whole of anything. The short 20-second burst of music is the short burst of life that they will live before they have to begin making donations. Kathy agrees that this is silly, but the good feelings it creates allow her to overlook the absurdity. The real, sincere feelings she experiences throughout her life justify the artificial limit placed on her existence. 

“There were other buildings, usually the outlying ones, that were virtually falling down, which we couldn’t use for much, but for which we felt in some way responsible.” 

The residents of the Cottages describe their relationship to the buildings in which they live in the same way the carers describe their relationship to the donors. They inhabit the same world but can only look on as these edifices crumble and break. The residents watch the buildings fall apart into nothingness, and the carers watch the donors work their way toward completion. The entropy and the inevitable breakdown of everything are accelerated because the residents of the Cottages have no idea how to repair the buildings and the carers have no idea how to repair the system that shortens their lives. 

“But when I think about it now, I can see things more from Ruth’s viewpoint.” 

An inherent tragedy in Kathy’s narration is that the distance from events provides her with a new perspective. She takes many years to come to the conclusion that different forces and views might have colored events in a certain way. The 10 years that pass between her time at the Cottages and the time she narrates the novel mean that neither she nor her fellow donors, all destined to die early, will ever develop the essential perspective on their later lives. Ruth, Tommy, and Kathy lack the opportunity to reflect wholly on their lives because their short existences limit their ability to gain perspective and distance on important events and issues. 

“Our models were an irrelevance, a technical necessity for bringing us into the world.” 

The discussion of possibles makes the residents of the Cottages think about the people on whom they are based. Each resident is a clone of a person from the outside world, but the speculation and lack of information that surrounds these original models makes the residents feel strange. The acknowledgement of the existence of a possible is a tacit acceptance of the fact that a person is a copy designed only for organ donation. Speculation and identification of possibles is a dark, confusing subject as it deeply relates to the residents’ identities but forces them to confront the nature of their existence. The irony of Kathy referring to the original models as “a technical necessity” is that the clones themselves are little more than necessary organ farms that allow other people to live longer. They are shells for medical products, technically necessary housing units for the organs that justify their existence. 

“I don’t remember anything like that at Hailsham.”

Sitting in the café in Norfolk, Tommy pushes back against his girlfriend. His relationship with Ruth can be acrimonious at times, and they both know how to hurt one another. Tommy’s method is to disagree with her in front of people she is trying to impress. Ruth is desperate to appear mysterious and hints that a Hailsham deferral program might exist. Tommy flatly disagrees. He dismisses Ruth’s theory as nothing and makes her appear foolish. Tommy knows how to rebel against his partner, and his decision to finally criticize her in public is a matured version of his childhood temper tantrums. 

“We’re modelled from trash. Junkies, prostitutes, winos, tramps.” 

Ruth’s visit to Norfolk brings her face to face with the tragic, desperate nature of the donors’ situation. They can never truly know themselves because they are hidden from so much of the world. The real identities of the people they are modeled upon might provide them insight as to who they really are, but this information is withheld. The most negative possible assumptions fester in the minds of the donors, but only Ruth explicitly states their worst fears. She announces that they are modeled on “trash,” a comment that carries the implication that they are trash themselves. They emerge from the dregs of society and can achieve nothing because they are inherently garbage. Ruth’s emotional experience in Norfolk makes her unleash her most serious doubts about her own life, the doubts that Kathy is too scared to say aloud. 

“The tape had been the perfect excuse for all this fun, and now it had turned up, we’d have to stop.” 

The search for the cassette tape becomes a moment of real warmth and emotion between Tommy and Kathy. The actual discovery of the tape threatens to ruin one of the happiest moments of Kathy’s life. For a brief second, she wonders whether she should just ignore the tape and continue with the search. She does not necessarily value the tape. The emotion of the moment comes from the time she spends with Tommy, away from Ruth. She is given a glimpse of what their lives might be like together, and for a brief moment she is able to live in a different world. The discovery of the tape ends that moment and that dream. 

“But please, let’s not bring everyone else in on it.” 

Just as Tommy knows how to hurt Ruth, Ruth knows how to hurt Tommy. She sets up an elaborate scheme to mock his drawings, but the scheme contains the implicit acceptance that Kathy means more to Tommy than Ruth does. Her plan depends on Kathy mocking Tommy’s art as she knows that he values Kathy’s opinion over her own. The scheme reveals that Ruth understands the close bond between her two friends, and she shatters the understanding and the warmth between them with one carefully timed comment. The irony of her words is that she tells Tommy “let’s not bring everyone else in on it” even though her plan has depended entirely on bringing Kathy into the situation.  

“You must know what I mean. Tommy doesn’t like girls who’ve been with…well, you know, with this person and that.” 

Just as Ruth delivers a calculating blow to Tommy’s emotions, she does the same to Kathy. Ruth and Kathy have spent many nights talking together about their biggest fears. Kathy has mentioned her anxieties and neuroses regarding sex, and Ruth turns these against her friend. She tells Kathy that the reason that Tommy will never love her is the exact reason that Kathy will never love herself. Ruth locates Kathy’s biggest insecurity and points to this exact reason to explain why Kathy will never be with the man she loves. Ruth’s comment is calculated, casual, and designed to devastate Kathy.

“I’d meant us, all the students who’d grown up with me and were now spread across the country, carers and donors, all separated now but still somehow linked by the place we’d come from.” 

Rumors of Hailsham’s demise reach Kathy long before they are confirmed. Her old friend assures Kathy that their former school is closed, and Kathy’s first thought is not for the current students but for the ones who have already graduated. The graduates of Hailsham are linked by their shared experiences, and these shared experiences define who they are. Kathy feels the unspoken bond that she shares with Ruth and Tommy, and she cannot untangle those experiences from Hailsham. The closure of the school is a reminder of the demise of these relationships and of her own mortality. Every relationship, whether it is with people or with a school, eventually ceases to be. 

“I could smell a faint odor of something medical on him which I couldn’t identify.” 

Kathy’s reunion with Tommy is a reminder of the ways they have changed in their time apart. She has become a carer and has dedicated her short life to noticing small medical changes in people and helping them work through these changes. Tommy has become a donor, and his life is dominated by medical procedures. Kathy cannot identify the smell because she no longer knows Tommy as she once did. She cannot relate to him in this medical context because he seems too much like a donor and less like her old friend. The slightly discordant smell reminds Kathy of the distance that has opened up between herself and Tommy. 

“I wonder how it got here.”

As the three friends stare at the boat, they question how it became stranded on the marsh, but the comment is less about the boat than it is about their own lives. The boat becomes a metaphor for their lost, lonely existences. The entire narrative of the book is Kathy taking the time to explain how she got to be in the strange, isolated position as the boat. She wonders how the boat came to be in an odd location, and this intrigue is then turned back on to her own life. She is a lost object whose history needs to be traced. 

“But what a pity we left it so late.” 

Tommy and Kathy’s relationship finally becomes sexual, but each sexual act carries with it a small degree of tragedy and pity. They have reached a point in their lives when there is very little time left. Tommy has donated several times and may complete after his next donation. Each time they have sex, they are reminded of how little time they have left and how much time they wasted when they were not together. For all the love and satisfaction of their relationship, their joy is tempered by the realization of what they have lost. 

“People did their best not to think about you.” 

Miss Emily explains the role of the clones in the society. Most people try to ignore the complicated moral questions such as whether the children have souls. They try their best “not to think” about the reality of what the organ donation costs. This revelation is devastating for Kathy and Tommy. They are being told that their existence and their happiness are little more than guilty thoughts at the back of other people’s minds. They are told that they do not matter beyond their capacity to donate organs. 

“There were times I’d look down on you all from my study window and I’d feel such revulsion…” 

Miss Emily is one of the greatest allies of the donors, but she still cannot help but admit to her revulsion when she looked at the children. However, her revulsion is not exactly as Kathy believes it to be. Miss Emily is not disgusted by the individual children but by the system itself. Every time she sees a child laugh or cry, she is reminded of the brutal and inhumane system of which she is a part. Her revulsion is directed at herself for being complicit in a terrible system. Even though she is trying to save the children and give them the best possible lives, she does this by taking a lead role in raising children for organ donation. Miss Emily’s revulsion is actually a form of self-loathing. 

“It’s because they’re not sure they’ll really complete.” 

Being able to complete is the natural end of a donor’s life. The clones are indoctrinated to believe that competition is a laudable, wonderful act. The reality of completion is that it may happen after a first, second, third, or fourth donation. Tommy reaches his fourth donation and discovers that the certainty and purpose of the end of his life is not as he imagined it. Completion becomes a strange, unquantifiable idea because he knows that he will be kept alive even after his fourth donation to provide more organs for more people, only he will not be alive any more in any meaningful sense. The uncertainty of the late stages of life is terrifying for the donors. The fragile purpose on which they have built their lives seems more unstable than ever, and fear and the unknown become more terrifying than the pain of donation.