A Theory About Style

Perhaps the element of the novel I'm most impressed with is the style of writing. I've only just recently noticed this and formed my theory, but details concerning the dystopian society have been slipped into my mind, like reverse pickpocketing. I realized this only after Kath began discussing how she believed that the guardians slipped knowledge into the student's minds before they knew enough to understand it. It's all explained on page 74, "We'd been, 'told and not told'... throughout all our years at Hailsham, (they've) timed very carefully and deliberately everything they told us so that we were always just too young to understand properly the latest piece of information. But of course, we'd taken it in at some level".

If I had been in a cartoon a light bulb would have lit up above my head. Kazuo Ishiguro has been slipping details into my mind, just like he makes the guardians do in his novel. My mind has been hacked.

What I mean is, it has recently been revealed that the students at Hailsham are not normal kids, they are being raised specifically to be organ donors, once they are old enough their 'donations' begin, and these donations continue until so many of their organs have been harvested that they die. "None of you will be film stars. And none of you will be working in supermarkets. Your lives are set out for you, You'll become adults, then before you're even middle-aged, you'll start to donate your vital organs"(74). Horrifying, right? Well, I wasn't particularly perturbed when I read this. 'Yeah, that makes sense' was the first thought I had when I read this.

The reason behind this lack of surprise is I was introduced to the idea of 'donors' and 'carers' from the first page of the book when I had no idea what those words meant. The words are mentioned early on and the reader skims over them asuming they will make more sense later. Then more little details are slipped in as Kath talks about Ruth recovering from her donations, and when Kath loses her first patient, it's phrased as 'my own doner completed the night before, nobody blamed me, it was a complicated surgery'. Completed, not even died, just completed.

Beyond the sneaky familiarization of the words, those of us reading Never Let Me Go knew the kids weren't normal because regular people were afraid of them, and their bodies were more important than other peoples. Kath states as early as page 12, "At Hailsham, we had to have some form of medical almost every week", I don't know about you guys but I certainly don't think regular people go to the doctor every week. Miss Lucy also tells students it is very important they never smoke. It is so much more important for them to be healthy than for her. I guess if Miss Lucy is to get lung cancer she can just have the lungs of one of her students, no problem there.

Perhaps I am reading too far into the book... or perhaps Kazuo Ishiguro is a genius and has indeed hacked my mind. I'm curious what the other people reading Never Let Me Go have to say.

The style that Ishiguro writes in is just so captivating. While I'll be the first to admit that the beginning of the book was a little slow, now I'm very caught up in the intricacies of his writing, and the near infinite amount of foreshadowing I must pay attention to. The book is told in flashbacks, the fact that Kath is looking backward makes everything that she says more significant as we know she is building her story in an order that makes sense, including details only where we will need them later. Time and memory seem to be important themes as Kath stresses the importance of her memory, and the progression of her life. Also, as one of my blog followers, Catherine O., pointed out Never Let Me Go seems to have a lot of similarities to The Handmaid's Tale and Brave New World. Both books include themes where the type of society depicted in the novel makes you question the ethics of humans.

Another stylistic element that's worth mentioning is the way that Kath addresses the reader, as 'you'. For example, she says, "I don't know how it was where you were" and "It doesn't really matter how well your guardians tried to prepare you" implying that the reader is like Kath, raised in an estate like Hailsham, with guardians. For me, this adds to the subtle creepy vibe of the book. I really wanted to tell Kath 'What?! I don't have guardians. This isn't normal!' Obviously I couldn't, but the more I read the more I realize that Hailsham is not like other places, it seems to be more important. This is another idea that was introduced by Kath on the very first page of the novel, but I tossed it aside as unimportance until the idea recently and mysteriously resurfaced in the second part of the book. Classic Ishiguro am I right.

My next theory will have to be about how the smartest organ clones are placed in Hailsham to see if they are worth keeping in society. Regardless, between the element of mystery foreshadowing and the odd selection for point of view Ishiguro's style is very clear, and in my opinion, an effective way to shape the, shall I say, less than normal world Kath lives in.