Not to Be "That Vegan" But...

In Never Let Me GO, as more information about the clones and the carer/donor system arose, made me think about how the donor system is very similar to Animal Agriculture, and whether/why one is more ethically accepted than the other.

Not to be "that vegan" but as I was reading this story, and we were discussing it in class, many discussions occurred the expressed our individual opinions on the matter of the whole "donor system," and whether or not it was good. The fact that the clones were being raised for slaughter was brought into many of our debates about which treatment towards them would be more humane. Now, I am not going to go "full vegan," and go into the debate about whether or not animals have souls, so don't worry. I just thought it was interesting to compare the lives of the clones and the lives of animals in factory farms.

In both situations, the beings are being raised with the intent to kill them when they're young. Whether or not their quality of life that is leading up to their demise is good or bad, they are still dying for the purpose of nourishing other human bodies. However, people seem to question and be more distraught over the lives of the clones,  claiming that it was no way to live, and ideally the clones should be able to live normal lives. Why do these clones receive more empathy from us than the animals who are raised for slaughter every day?

I guess it's not really a question that can be answered, and many people will have different opinions and perspectives of the situation. The book just left me wondering why one soul can be raised for slaughter without a second thought, while another soul of a different species receives our empathy and support when trying to resist the system.

When reading the book "Never Let Me Go," I couldn't help but think about how similar somethings were to the movie "Jurassic Park." Although this may sound like a childish and ridiculous idea, there is a very logical connection. (A summary of Jurassic park>) In Steven Spielberg's massive blockbuster, paleontologists Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) are among a select group chosen to tour an island theme park populated by dinosaurs created from prehistoric DNA. While the park's mastermind, billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), assures everyone that the facility is safe, they find out otherwise when various ferocious predators break free and go on the hunt.  In this movie, the genetic scientists bring back dinosaurs. They use the blood in the fossils of mosquitos from millions of years ago, to almost clone dinosaurs. In the video below, you can see how the mosquito got fossilized. The movie can also relate to the book in that that dinosaurs break free and go on the hunt. Ruth, Tommy, and Kathy did not "break free and go on the hunt," but they did go out searching for their possibles, and a deferral. The dinosaurs, like the children of Hailsham, were unnaturally created from the DNA of another being, or dinosaur. The students of Hailsham were created to donate their organs to people in the "real world." The dinosaurs were made for the creators to get more money, or whatever the reason really was. Nonetheless, both were created for a purpose.

The Suite Life Movie - Never Let Me Go

When clones were first mentioned in the book I couldn’t help but think back to the movie The Suite Life Movie. For those who do not know this movie, it is a Disney Channel Movie based off the TV show series Suite Life on Deck, and for those who do not know that show, well that’s sad. But in this movie two twins are ultimately tricked into becoming the same person through a series of labs and experiments, in an attempt to become clones of one another. In this movie, the twins begin as two separate beings but begin to feel the exact same things, physically and emotionally, as they continue doing the labs and experiments, until they merge, meaning that their identities consolidate into one identity, and are able to be controlled under one person (the person that tricked them). Thankfully, they were able to break the merge, by arguing and acting less as one. As for the rest of the clones that were in the movies, they all acted for the most part the same, having been controlled by the same master mind, but were also able to break from the system. This movie is similar to Never Let me Go because the students of Hailsham were being tricked and deceived of having a bright future, however in the end, find out that none of their hopes or dreams can be accomplished. However, unlike the students from Hailsham, the twins were able to break from the merging, while characters like Ruth, Tommy, and Kathy had to become carers and donors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWTWLUS8of8

Okay so I found this video a little while back and I thought it was really interesting. This guy's YouTube channel addresses a lot of really interesting issues and the way he makes his videos are cool too. This particular video addressed labels. When I clicked on it I was ready for that kind of generic "it doesn't matter what other people think, don't let society put a label on you, society is evil" stuff but it wasn't overflowing with that kind of content (while there is some of that, I didn't think he overdid it and I think the points he put behind the claims were valid). I'm posting this in relation to NLMG because it reminded me of our conversation about which was more humane, telling the children their fate from an early age or exposing their future later. The video talks about how we label ourselves because that's what we're taught to do from an earlier age, and in class we talked about how donations were normalized and all the children were brought up to believe this was just the way it is. They were also told they were different from humans, and while this is true, there's no staggering factor of division between humans and clones. The labels they are given do not take away their humanity... they are not traditionally human, but just like everyone else, they have humanity. 

(on a side note, there's a video by him I almost did a post about talking about how "we're all put on this earth for a reason, we're all born with a gift" and he goes on to elaborate on how to strive to complete goals. I decided it didn't connect with the text enough, but if anyone wants to watch it, I'll put the link here.  it's really cool and definitely worth a watch)

Comparing Nine Stories and NLMG

In the Novel Never Let Me Go, we see a lot of symbols that at first may not seem like important symbols or motifs, yet the come back throughout the book as we continue to read. A key example of this symbolism is the reappearnce of water throughout Ishiguro's book. I did not really catch on to this at first as we read through but it is an observation that I have made. In the previous book our class read: Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger, the first story in the collection also included water, in fact it is arguable it was the central setting throughout "A Perfect Day for Bananafish". In Never Let Me Go, we here of the water that used to fill the Kingsfeild pool, or the marsh where the dilapidated boat lay. In both of these situations, the water represents what used to be that is now unretrievable. In Salinger's compilation, Seymour Glass takes three-year-old Sybil into the water as if to relive his innocence that he so values in her. Despite his attempt, however, he is unsuccessful because his innocence cannot be retrieved. Thus, what the water symbolizes in both of the books.

Free to Fall

So this summer I read a book called “Free to Fall” by Lauren Miller. It takes place in a world where everyone is addicted to their handheld devices (sounds familiar), and a technology company, Gnosis, has developed an app called Lux which flawlessly optimizes decision making for the best personal results. People begin to rely on Lux to make their decisions for them and independent thought is slowly diminishing. Independent thought is strongly discouraged in this society, so much that hearing and listening to the 'voice in your head' is a mental disorder. Not every person uses Lux, but protagonist Rory Vaughn, along with the majority of people, uses it excessively. Rory is a modest girl who surprisingly gets accepted to an elite boarding school, Theden Academy. If you go to Theden, you are basically guaranteed that you are going to get an amazing job and live a perfect life. However, once at Theden, Rory discovers a huge plot about Gnosis and how they are planning on controlling people and their lives, even farther than what Lux is already doing. They are putting microbots into the flu shots that, when injected, interferes with your brain and your opinions and decisions. It would result in a society completely dependent on Lux and with no conscience, which is the ultimate goal of Gnosis.

I couldn’t help but think about “Free to Fall” while reading “Never Let Me Go”. There are some obvious parallels, but Gnosis and the guardians (or the people who started/lead the whole cloning program) ultimately have the opposite goals. Gnosis hopes for a world of people absolutely reliant on Lux and their products, completely rid of a conscience and nearly soulless (LIKE CLONES, but not scientifically). The guardians encourage self-expression through art and hope to see the clones have souls. It was interesting to see that there are two domineering forces in these stories having similar but very different objectives at the same time.

 

Connecting Never Let Me Go and Banksy

Just before you all read this - I know could be totally wrong about what Kazuo Ishiguro's intentions were when he wrote the book and if he even wanted to make any political/social statements. (I didn't look up any interviews or anything) However, this is what I personally got out of some parts of the book.

It seemed to me that along with writing an great book, Kazuo Ishiguro was trying to make a statement about problems in the world such as human rights and equality (clone’s rights and whether they were treated humanely or not), scientific discovery and the social issues that result from it, and hope. Ishiguro also seemed to explore moral issues. For example, is it okay to kill a group of people/clones/animals for the benefit of humanity? Ishiguro used examples in the book of these moral issues. We became attached to the characters, and then we saw the true destructive force of inequality and lies put onto people like Ruth, Kathy, and Tommy. In my opinion, this book got points across in an entertaining way. This is why I am choosing to connect Never Let Me Go and the anonymous graffiti artist Banksy. Banksy’s real name and identity is mostly unknown to people, but he is very well known for the graffiti and artwork that he does throughout cities like New York and London. Banksy shows problems the world has in an engaging art form, similarly to Ishiguro’s writing. Many of the issues he seems to focus on are similar to the ones brought up in Never Let Me Go such as inequality, manipulation of people, innocence and valuing all life. Banksy also focuses a lot on humor, environmental issues, and stopping violence and war.

Another connection that I made between Banksy and Never Let me go was the mystery associated with both of them. Banksy is mysterious because people don’t know exactly who he is. Never let me go is mysterious because as readers, we were never given all the information about what was happening and we were often put in the same position as the main characters who were fairly ignorant about the world around them. Also, not everything in the book was fully explained which makes some parts a mystery. This forces us to interpret some things that happen to the book and are vaguely explained by ourselves. Banksy’s art, for the most part, can also be interpreted differently depending on the person because as an anonymous artist he usually doesn’t want to or feel the need to explain his artwork. The unknown parts of this book and art make both of them much more appealing because most people like being able to figure out things for themselves and determine what something means.

I thought the following examples of his art show obvious connections to Never Let Me Go. (innocence, inequality especially regarding the clone's opportunities and futures, lies and abuse of power, and valuing life)

Do We Have "Possibles"?

There are many cases of unrelated people looking eerily similar. Whether it’s Will Ferrell and the drummer Chad Smith, or the faces of Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber, these pairs can make one do a double take. Supposedly, everyone has seven doppelgangers dispersed throughout the world. A trio of Dublin City University students even created “Twin Strangers”, a project they developed in order to help themselves and other people find their lookalikes. One of the creators actually found two of her “twins” already. Science even supports this theory that there is a reasonable chance that everyone has a doppelganger. Although there is obviously never an exact copy and how similar people look is subjective, there is a possibility that each person has a lookalike somewhere across the globe. There is a great number of genes that influence the human visage, in fact scientists still do not know the quantity, and more genes are linked to our looks than any other part of the human body. Human evolution has also favored this great variation and the resulting high level of distinction between faces as we are social creatures and care who is who. Despite this great diversity of genes, scientists have used the analogy that if a deck of cards is shuffled so many times, at some point the same hand will be dealt more than once in order to express how two people could be genetically similar.

  I couldn’t help but think of this theory when we read about the “possibles” of the students at Hailsham and Ruth’s trip to Norfolk to find her’s. There is a belief that each student has a “possible”, someone who they were cloned after and is someone in the world (albeit not necessarily the same age). Just as Ruth wonders about the life of her possible, it is ridiculous to not speculate what the life would be of someone who looks exactly like you. Where do they live? Is their personality similar to yours? Do they have an ideal career, such as Ruth’s view of her suspected possible’s office job, or are they trash and one should “look in the gutter” as she later says? Additionally, this idea that there are up to seven people who look like you seems awfully hopeful and slightly idyllic, much like Ruth’s expectations of what her trip to Norfolk would be.

e-s-s-a-y

        So I want to talk about the essays that the students at the Cottages have to do in Never Let Me Go. It seems to me as if the essays are somewhat of a senior thesis or capstone project for them. It is mentioned that they're at the Cottages for two years, in which the only tasks are (I presume) to stay healthy, get ready for training, and to write an essay. I have to say that nothing much of the essay is explained. How long is the final draft, seeing as they're given two years to do it? What is it about? A book? A memoir (what if all of Never Let Me Go is just Kathy's essay written way, way past deadline)? Apparently, you're allowed to write about whatever strikes your fancy. Kathy comes up with the topic of Victorian novels right on the spot. The guardians are also understandably pretty lax about assigning and choosing topics for the essay, after all, they won't be present with the students at the Cottages.
         I wish this was brought up more in depth, because like the creative pieces made by the students during their time at Hailsham, I feel that these essays are very, very telling about the souls of the students. Is it their last creative hurrah? Do any of the pieces get into the Gallery? Who even is this being submitted to; who grades/judges it? Again, the essay is only brought up in passing, mostly in chapter 10 of the book. The use of second person, what with the "you" and assumptions that the reader already knows some information, is frustrating to say the least because we don't get full answers (as with so many other things). Here is a rudimentary theory I've cobbled together, though:
         No one looks at these essays, for there simply is no real authority figure there for the students past Hailsham. It is said that "the more distant Hailsham grew, the less important the essays seemed". Instead the essays are just something to occupy the students, fill all the dead time between the days that just slip past. Essays are intended to give life at the Cottages a meaning for the students though they really are nothing more than a distraction to keep them from thinking too much about their inevitably dark futures.

GUYS OH MY GOD

 THE ACTOR THAT PLAYS ASH IN THE BLACK MIRROR EPISODE IS THE SAME PERSON THAT PLAYS RODNEY IN THE NEVER LET ME GO MOVIE
what fresh hell is this i feel like there's some sort of sorcery going on to make things like this happen like the stars aligned (pun!) or something. This is where I saw it, in the movie trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXiRZhDEo8A

Can this count as my blog post

Nothing is explained

In Never Let Me Go, so many things are left unexplained or just touched on and then not brought back.  Some examples are the essay at the cottages, the war Madame talks about, whether "possibles" actually exist, what the little symbols are, and obviously the biggest is where the organs are going to/ what they're used for.  I waited until after we finished to say this because I figured at least a few of these would be answered, which obviously did not happen.  If only a few of these didn't get answered it would be ok, and might even make the book better, but since there are so many questions it makes it a worse book in my opinion.  Even a short epilogue that would give the reader some closure would be fine, but we don't get anything like that.

How Bon Iver and NLMG remember the important things

On July 8, 2007, after a long but good winter, Justin Vernon emerged from a hunting cabin, and with him, he brought the project Bon Iver, and his debut album ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’. The album’s background has become folklore since its recording. Following a breakup, Vernon retreated the cabin he and his father used to visit. There, he alone recorded nine songs about lost love and mediocrity on his guitar, singing with a now signature falsetto. Bon Iver, like all artists, immortalized the important things, exactly like Kathy remembering Ruth, Tommy and Hailsham in her story.

In a period of 8 years, Justin Vernon, the creator and sole member of folk-pop project Bon Iver, has released 2 albums- a self-titled album in 2011, and '22, A Million' in 2016. Both these albums are about how we preserve and connect moments and memories to places, people, words, and feelings.

Bon Iver's 2nd album, Bon Iver, is a Grammy-winning collection of chamber-pop. All of the songs are named after places, like Holocene, about a bad night spent at the bar Holocene, or Calgary, about falling in love during a morning swim. All of the songs tie moments and memories to places, like the fields where Kathy imagines Hailsham and Tommy, or Norfolk, where Kathy returns, hoping to find all the things she'd forgotten and lost.

Bon Iver's most recent album, '22, A Million', is different, to say the least. His falsetto is largely gone, instead choosing to feed his voice through a modified vocoder his producer invented, called The Messina. The song titles are cryptic, like 33 "GOD", and 8(circle). His connections to places are minimal, the only locations are a Wisconsin area code in 715 - CREEKS, and an apartment in 29 #Strafford APTS. Its lyrics are confusing, like "I'd hide Berlin/To run and find it" in 21 MOON WATER. He makes up words, like "Astuary king"(a combination of actuary and estuary). His stories are nonlinear, sometimes telling of a breakup before the relationship itself, or describing a night in fragments while forgoing setting. Vernon is rarely tying memories to places, and now numbers and feelings, connecting religion with math, or emotions with The Messina. In this album, Vernon, like Kathy, remembers only the necessary things. Instead of people and places like Kathy, he remembers everything, like abstract ideas, places, people, thoughts, and feelings.

Never Let Me Go is a book of memories, and while it is told linearly, Kathy jumps between talking to us directly, reflecting on her life, and telling her life's story. Even though she tells us her entire life, it's mostly the story of her, Ruth, Tommy, and Hailsham. Kathy only remembers the important things in her life, and remembers them clearly, leaving everything in her life to fade to the background. Bon Iver does the same, but it seems like there is almost too much to remember for Justin Vernon. While Kathy focuses on remembering 3 different things, Vernon attempts to immortalize places, people, relationships, religious beliefs, and emotions. Vernon ties them together, like the surreal image of the clown carrying human-shaped balloons tied together. The only thing preventing the balloons from floating away is their connection to each other, Never being let go.

Connection Between Never Let Me Go and Chicken Run

The other day, I watched one of my favorite childhood movies, Chicken Run. I couldn't help but draw some connections between the movie and Never Let Me Go. In chicken Run, the chickens are trapped living in a coop, and have a set path for their life. The couple that owns the farm, Mrs. Tweedy and Mr. Tweedy use the chickens for their eggs, then once the chickens can't have any more eggs, they kill the chickens. Obviously, this can be compared to how the students are being used for their organs, then die once their is no use for them anymore. The students at Hailsham are portrayed in a very human like way, even though they are clones, just as the chickens seem like real people, even though the are actually chickens. Then, one day a rooster named Rocky comes in and tries to convince the chickens that their is a way that they can learn to fly, and escape their impending doom. This can be compared to the false hope that was given to the students with the deferrals. Just like the chickens realize eventually that they can't fly, Kathy and Tommy realize that the deferrals are not real. Their is a difference between the two though. At the end of Chicken Run, the chickens manage to somehow build a plane and fly over the fences of the farm and escape. Unfortunately, Kathy does not end up fighting for her freedom. The chickens never gave up, but Kathy did.

Don't Hug me I'm Scared

The video Don't Hug me I'm Scared went viral a few years ago, and when reading Never Let Me Go, I couldn't help but think of it. If you haven't seen it yet, I recommend you watch it now, its better if you don't know what happens in it. The first major connection between this weird video and Never Let me Go is the idea of creativity. In the video the notebook is telling the characters about how important creativity is, exactly like how creativity is preached at Hailsham. All is well for the characters, they are in a familiar environment and are being taught about how they should prize creativity. There are occasional slips into a darker reality, just like there are at Hailsham. When the yellow puppet paints a picture of a clown, the notebook telling them to be creative destroys it with black ink. It is also an interesting connection that the thing the yellow puppet paints that is deemed uncreative is a clown, just like Kathy saw. Another break in their reality is when the yellow puppet says green is favorite color after being asked by the notebook to arrange sticks into his favorite color. I think the yellow puppet is in a similar position to the one Tommy was in at Hailsham. Both characters are ostracized for not being creative, although both are shown to actually be creative, just not in the way the system wants them to be.

The next part of the video is where it gets really weird, and this is probably why it went viral. People thought the twist was funny and unexpected, but there is more to this video than that. First the puppets start making arts and crafts projects, but in a very frantic and messy way. Then it lapses to a computer generated version of the set and puppets and the clapboard and film crew that are behind the show are shown as the angle changes. The music gets more frantic and there is some kind of animal's heart being used in the crafts. People in costumes like the puppets replace the puppets, and they cut open a cake only to find it is full of organs. The notebook ends the horror by telling them to never be creative again. The sudden transition from shelter and creativity to a frantic and bloody life is much like the transition Kathy faces when she becomes a carer. She is rushing from place to place watching people she knows and cares about get harvested for their organs and has lost all creativity she might have had earlier in her life. The decision to use organs to symbolize this loss of innocence in DHMIS also connects to NLMG for obvious reasons.

There is too much production value in this video for anyone to believe it is just to be funny. There is a lot of speculation as to the meaning of this video, but if it turned out the creators were inspired by Ishiguro I wouldn't be surprised. The creators have commented on the video's meaning vaguely and erratically but many theories suggest it is related to the inclusion of advertising in children's television programs. There are also several sequels to this video that you can find on youtube that are also in the same vein, but none are as closely connected to NLMG as the first one is. Whatever way you want to interpret this video, I think it has connections to Never Let me Go that are worth analyzing.

Connections Between "Never Let Me Go" and Unwind"

While cleaning my room the other day, I found a book called "Unwind" by Neal Shusterman. In this book, unwanted teens are forced to get "unwound," in which their organs and body parts are taken from them. Connor, Risa, and Lev are the main characters of this story and they are trying to fight the system that would "unwind" them, doing anything in their power to survive. As I looked at this story, it immediately reminded me of "Never Let Me Go" because of many reasons. First, both of the stories take place in societies where nothing is what it seems. The kids in the stories and the lives they live seem pretty normal, but their futures of getting their organs taken from them are everything but normal. Also, in "Unwind," there are 3 main characters that are trying to cope and fight against the "unwinding" system, much like how in "Never Let Me Go," there are 3 main characters (Ruth, Tommy, and Kathy) that are trying to cope with their inevitable and horrible futures. Therefore, "Unwind" and "Never Let Me Go" have many similarities in their plots and characters.

So You Think You're Creative...

I listened to this episode of Studio 360 (a great podcast that tends to focus on pop culture and the arts) the other day on my way home from school, and it seemed so relevant given our discussions of the role of creativity at Hailsham. Give it a listen (either in its entirety or in segments) if you're interested.