Never Let Me Go and Its Relation to Our Society

By Robert Schroder ’24

The world we live in is a very cruel place. In order for anyone to gain, someone must lose something. In the novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, the main characters live in a world where people are willing to go much further than what we would consider “ethical.” After a big war, they have created a way to cure many diseases we currently think of as incurable. However, the process in which they do so is not in any way morally correct. They raise clones of humans solely to harvest their organs when they are old enough. This idea would be unimaginable to our society today. But, as Ishiguro put it, “How can you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable,...To put away that cure, to go back to the dark days?” (Ishiguro 263). This book is extremely related to our world, mainly in our sense of greed and selfishness, how we turn a blind eye to all of the bad things happening around us, and the ethicality of such things.

Our greed and selfishness have been a part of us as far back as you can look in history. One of the greatest examples of this are conquerors. All throughout history, the world has been conquered and fought over. We waged war and destroyed civilizations, killing millions, if not billions, of people. All of this to claim land and gain wealth. It is no surprise that Ishiguro depicts society in his book just as greedy, if not more greedy than us. The extent that society has gone to just to get organs for transplants is morally wrong. However, if we had the same technology in our world, there would be, at least in secret, the same thing happening. There is no way to stop people’s greed. Time is the most valuable thing we are given, and if people have a way to get more of it, they would go to any extent to get it. In Never Let Me Go, the society cares solely about themselves and their family, and not at all about the people being sacrificed to give them organs. As long as it’s not affecting them or hurting them in any way, they don’t care what happened to the clones.

We, as humans, constantly turn a blind eye to things we don’t want to confront or think about. Politicians, world leaders, companies, and even society in general ignore the things they do not want to face. Some examples of this are how we constantly ignore climate change. Companies ignore the amount of pollution they are creating, while consumers do not even realize how much they themselves are producing. We ignore the invasion of Ukraine because it’s on the other side of the world and doesn’t affect us. We act like Covid didn’t even happen, even though millions of people died. This is because it is easier to look away than to open our eyes.

In the case of the clones, society has already gotten used to being able to cure incurable diseases. They would rather keep their eyes closed, and imagine that the organs just appear out of thin air, and were not stolen from human beings who are raised to think of their “donations” as a normal occurrence. “What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand” (Ishiguro, NLMG Movie). This quote perfectly captures how little the clones know about the real world. Even though they know their lives are quite different, they still think their lives are still similar to a normal person’s. This shows how innocent and unknowing the clones actually are.

The ethicality of the “project” discussed by Ishiguro is nonexistent. The concept of raising clones of humans in order to kill them and harvest all of their vital organs is not even close to morally acceptable. With this said, Hailsham was still the closest way to do such a thing ethically. They allowed the clones to have a childhood and experience the real world at the cottages for a few years. However, even with this, “There are students being reared in deplorable conditions, conditions you Hailsham students could hardly imagine” (Ishiguro 261). This shows how awful the conditions for the clones really were, and how they were basically treated as lab rats and science experiments.

Overall, Never Let Me Go reflects our world very well. This could even be a possibility one day, if we lowered our morals enough. But it’s not that far off. We, as the human race, have done many terrible horrors that still affect us to this day. The biggest one, somewhat obviously, is slavery. Slavery is, in principle, quite similar to the clones’ lives. Children born into slavery are raised to believe that their lives are normal, just to all have the same fate. This, for slaves, being indefinite servitude, and for the clones, donating all of their organs. However, one thing that people don’t realize is that slavery still exists. According to End Slavery Now, “There are an estimated 21 million to 45 million people trapped in some form of slavery today.” It cannot be emphasized enough how well Ishiguro painted a picture of our current society. The greed, evil, and lack of morals that exists in our world is immeasurable. “I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes...But a harsh cruel world” (Ishiguro 273). This relates to how even when we make a new discovery, or a step in the right direction, we will always be held back by the cruelness, selfishness, and greed of the human race.

Works Cited Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. Faber and Faber, 2021. “Never Let Me Go Quotes by Kazuo Ishiguro.” Goodreads, Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/ 1499998-never-let-me-go. “Slavery Today: Different Types of Human Trafficking.” End Slavery Now, http://www.endslaverynow.org/learn/ slavery-today.

Keenan, Jamie. “Cover of Never Let Me Go.” Goodreads, https:// www.goodreads.com/book/ show/