Cecilia Duykers, Spring 2024
Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go, epitomizes 1990s Great Britain through its resilient protagonist Kathy H. whose experience as a human clone depicts aspects of inequity in British culture. Never Let Me Go entails a Britain separated into two primary classes: humans and human clones. Ishiguro’s version of Britain forces these clones not only into isolation for most of their lives without proper education of who they are but also forces them to donate their organs. Never Let Me Go’s representation of the 1990s depicts the unjust Disability Legislation during that time period. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson explains in her article “Eugenic Worldbuilding and Disability” how the clones “paradoxically possess normate embodiment and disabled status” (138). Towards Inclusion– Civil Rights for Disabled People outlines specific issues with Britain’s Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 that correlate with Never Let Me Go in matters of education, transportation, and employment. By comparing Towards Inclusion to Never Let Me Go, I offer how Ishiguro specifically represents Britain’s discrimination towards Disabled People.
Kathy separates her life into three parts: her childhood at her boarding school Hailsham, her adolescence at an isolated cottage, and her adulthood as a carer or nurse. She also re-tells stories about her childhood schoolmates, Ruth and Tommy, as their past tethers all three of their lives. Kathy’s unreliability as a narrator asks the audience to question her accuracy and power over re-telling these two characters' lives. However, Kathy's unique experience and authority over her own situation displays Britain’s subjugation towards human clones.
Part One of Never Let Me Go intentionally provides the reader with little information about the world they are reading to mimic Kathy's lack of education she received at Hailsham. Miss Lucy, one of the guardians or teachers at Hailsham expresses her disgust with its education system and explains to the clones “you’ve been told and not told” (Ishiguro 81). Through Miss Lucy and Hailsham’s deceptive education, Ishiguro outlines issues with education for those with disabilities as well as education about disabilities. Most shockingly, Hailsham's education was far superior to those of other boarding schools for clones. The former principal of Hailsham, Miss Emily, asserts to Kathy and Tommy how they were “lucky pawns,” illustrating even when the education system of Never Let Me Go’s Britain attempted to give accessible education to children, it was merely a ploy for their own moral licensing (266).
Section 2.4 of the first draft for Towards Inclusion highlights how the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 offered much improvement towards protecting Disabled People’s rights, but also offered a major failing in regards to education (Disability Rights Task Force 7). Rather than offering simple suggestions in Towards Inclusion, the Disability Rights Task Force and the government proposed The Special Education Needs and Disability Bill to combat discrimination in the classroom. Furthermore, The Disability Rights Task Force suggested past ways in which they promoted education about disability in Sections 2.11-2.13 in the first draft of Towards Inclusion, such as the “campaign (‘See the Person’)” (8). While these opportunities provided ways to promote disability awareness, this momentum should continue, and in a way, Ishiguro’s novel offers another such opportunity.
Kathy’s adolescence at the isolated Cottages exemplifies another way Never Let Me Go discriminated against her by making her transportation inaccessible. Kathy describes when she and the others left Hailsham; she, Ruth, and Tommy, “rarely stepped beyond the confines of the Cottages” as her entire life was without social interaction beyond the school’s grounds (Ishiguro 118). Even though the government allowed Kathy to travel to the surrounding areas of the Cottages and eventually the entirety of Great Britain, the transportation was beyond inaccessible. The clones were never given cars or the money to buy them as public transportation was likely scarce in the deep countryside. The one time Kathy, Ruth, Tommy, and others desired to borrow a car, “the arrangement broke down” implying further discrimination (146).
In Section 2.35-2.36 of the first draft of Towards Inclusion, the Disability Rights Task Force demonstrates different accessible actions in regards to transportation, such as the “Public Service Vehicle Accessibility Regulations.” While regulations like the “Public Service Vehicle Accessibility Regulations” demonstrate the steps taken to provide accessibility on transportation for those with disabilities, it should also challenge if there is accessible transportation in Great Britain for rural areas as well.
The final part of Never Let Me Go elicits Great Britain’s inaccessibility of employment for Disabled People. Kathy’s job as a “carer” requires her to look after other clones during their donations. American readers might view the term “carer” as simply an aspect of Ishiguro’s world, but the British commonly use the term “carer” when describing anyone who “takes care” of someone else. Throughout the novel, the clones dream of employment opportunities, such as Ruth’s goal of working in an office. These dreams are just dreams; however, as their government forces the clones to work as carers. The job “carer” is particularly cruel for Kathy because she cares for other clones undergoing difficult donations that eventually lead to their inevitable deaths (207).
Never Let Me Go’s fictional government barring clones from work mimics British employment policies during the 1990s barring Disabled People from employment opportunities. The Disability Rights Task Force indicates the British government’s failure in protecting employment during the 1990s for those with disabilities in section 3.3.1 of Towards Inclusion. Specifically, the Task Force highlights how the DDA provides employment rights for Disabled People, but “excludes employers with fewer than 15 employees” (17).
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein inspired much of Never Let Me Go as both stories involve “creations” (the Creature and the clones) to represent superhuman characters (Shelley 101). Readers can also inspect both texts by investigating their similar structures. Like Ishiguro, Shelley separates her novel into three parts representing the various organs and body parts sewn and thrown together to create the Creature. Ishiguro’s structure functions in the same way but also highlights the three separate donation processes with the three parts of his novel.
The UK Science Museum’s Wellcome Galleries displayed a film titled When Medicine Defines What’s “Normal”: Family Genes and Normality and presents a series of interviews with stories from British Disabled People about their family lives and how Britain and the world define them. To combat defining someone strictly by their disability, the interviews title each interview with the interviewee’s name followed by three characteristics, such as Jamie: Actor, Father, Friend. In Jamie’s interview he describes how his disability is “one of many, many characteristics.” By splitting the story structure of Never Let Me Go and Frankenstein, the authors argue that defining someone by one characteristic is not only insensitive but also disenfranchising. To describe Kathy simply as a clone is an injustice– Kathy H.: creative, resourceful, resilient.
Bibliography
Disability Rights Task Force. First draft of Towards Inclusion– Civil Rights for Disabled People. 2000. The National Archives, Kew.
Duykers, Cecilia. Photograph of University of Oxford. 15 March 2024. Author’s personal collection.
Duykers, Cecilia. Photograph of 1990s Medical Cot. 11 March 2024. Science Museum, UK., Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries. Author's personal collection.
Duykers, Cecilia. Photograph of “Disease Collectors 1900-1950” Science Museum. 11 March 2024. UK., Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries, Object no. L2019-299-304, L2019-306-307. Author’s personal collection.
Duykers, Cecilia. Photograph of First draft of Towards Inclusion– Civil Rights for Disabled People. 12 March 2024. The National Archives, Kew. Author’s personal collection.
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Eugenic World Building and Disability: The Strange World of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.” Journal of Medical Humanities, vol. 38, no. 02 Dec. 2017. pp. 133-145. SpringerLink Journals, doi: doi.org/10.1007/s10912-015-9368-y. Accessed 16 Apr. 2024.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. New York, Vintage Books, March, 2005.
Shelley, Mary-Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein. New York, Penguin Books, 2007.
Smith, Anastasia. Photograph of Frankenstein Manuscript. 15 March 2024. Bodleian Libraries, MS Abinger c.56. Author's personal collection.
When Medicine Defines What’s "Normal": Family, Genes, and Normality. Directed by Science Museum, UK., Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries, 2024.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the UAH Honors College for sponsoring my research in London and UAH Study Abroad for this opportunity. Thank you to Professor Reagan Grimsley and Professor Charlie Gibbons.
I would also like to thank the National Archives, Kew, The Science Museum UK, and Bodleian Libraires for housing my research and for all of their help.
A thank you to Dr. Joseph Conway for introducing me to both Never Let Me Go and Frankenstein.
A thank you to Anastasia Smith for joining me on my trip to Oxford and for the photo of the Frankenstein manuscript.
