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Summary Never let me go (Kazuo Ishiguro)
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Never Let Me GoKazuo Ishiguro
Type Of Work: Novel
Genre: dystopia; science fiction; coming-of-age story
Setting: Various locations in England, in the 1990s
Point of View: first-person
Point Of View: The narrator (Kathy) speaks in the first person, so the reader only sees her
point of view. Kathy describes her memories of characters and events subjectively, offering
her own thoughts and reflections. She frequently makes assumptions about the thoughts and
motivations of others.
Tone: Reflective, nostalgic, somber
Tense: the present tense, but switches to past tense when sharing memories.
Setting (Time): Late 1990s, but Kathy’s memories reach as far back as the early 1970s.
Setting (Place): Various locations in England
Major Conflict: Kathy wrestles with the loss of her childhood friends Ruth and Tommy by
turning to her memories the past, recalling her complex relationship with each one and with
the Hailsham school where they grew up together.
Rising Action: Kathy recalls growing up with Ruth and Tommy at Hailsham, where
ambiguous references to their future as “donors” punctuate their idyllic childhood. As they
become young adults, they hope in different ways for the possibility of changing or deferring
this future.
Climax: Kathy and Tommy visit Madame’s house, where Miss Emily cuts off their last hope
for more time together when she reveals that deferrals on donations do not exist.
Falling Action: Kathy spends a last few weeks with Tommy before he completes on his
fourth donation, leaving her with her memories as she waits to become a donor herself.
Foreshadowing:
- The woods beyond Hailsham foreshadow the grim future awaiting the students when
they leave;
- Tommy’s childhood tantrums foreshadow the grief that he and Kathy share in the
aftermath of their visit to Madame;
- The loss of Kathy’s tape foreshadows the many losses that she will later experience
as an adult.
Summary 1
Never Let Me Go
- narrated by Kathy H (31 years old).
o a former student at Hailsham
o now a ‘carer’ (has been for 12 years) who helps ‘donors’recuperate after they
give away their organs.
Kathy notes that her being a carer is a far longer time than other are.
The novel opens at Hailsham, an community flanked by football fields and filled with students
and kind “guardians,” like Miss Geraldine, Miss Lucy, and Miss Emily (Emily is also the
headmistress). Kathy becomes close friends with Ruth (head of a clique of fellow
students) and Tommy (a rather strange boy given to temper tantrums).
Art classes are very important at Hailsham, and Tommy is teased by his fellow students for
rarely placing works of art in the special Gallery selected by Madame, whom the students
, believe to be the head of school. During their time at Hailsham, the students room with one
another, submit art to Exchanges (which other students then receive), and buy small items at
periodic Sales occurring on the school grounds. Kathy buys a cassette tape by a woman
named Judy Bridgewater, which contains a song entitled “Never Let Me Go.” This song stirs
up strong emotions in Kathy, and one day, she is “caught” by Madame, while in her dorm,
dancing slowly to the music, and holding an imaginary child in her arms. Kathy notices that
this dancing causes Madame to cry, and she is initially confused by this, although she
realizes later that she cannot have children, and that perhaps Madame and the other
guardians feel sorry for the students for this reason.
As the students grow at Hailsham, they learn that they are clones, and that they will leave
Hailsham and soon begin “training” as “carers” and then as “donors.” Donors give their
organs away, one by one, for the benefit of non-cloned humans, and “carers” help the donors
during these difficult surgeries. Miss Lucy, another of the guardians at Hailsham, tells Tommy
when he is young that his art-class exercises do not really matter, and she tells the
assembled Hailsham students, when they are older, that they must prepare for the harsh
realities of their caring and donating lives. But the students are already aware of their fates—
they seem to accept them with eerie placidity—and they are shocked to learn, later, that Miss
Lucy has left the Hailsham faculty abruptly. Miss Lucy disagrees strongly with the “abstract”
methods—i.e. learning to give away art the way they will eventually give away their organs—
that the school uses to inform the clone students of their fates.
Kathy, Tommy and Ruth - the latter two having become a couple in their last year at
Hailsham - leave the school and begin a residency at the Cottages, where they read, pursue
romantic relationships, and socialize further, before leaving for their training as carers and
donors. The three friends, and Chrissie and Rodney, older Cottage students, take a trip to
Norfolk one weekend, because Rodney believes he has seen a “possible” clone parent for
Ruth there. The trip is a bitter one, however. The “possible” is not in fact Ruth’s original, and
Ruth becomes angry and informs the group of what they already know - that their clone
originals are taken from the “lowest rungs” of society. But Kathy and Tommy, in a second-
hand store in Norfolk, stumble upon a copy of the Judge Bridgewater cassette that Kathy
believed to have lost forever at Hailsham. Although it isn’t the same exact cassette, Kathy
wonders if there isn’t some truth to the students’ long-held idea that Norfolk is a “lost corner”
of England, where people go to find things they have misplaced elsewhere.
Kathy realizes that she is in love with Tommy, but Tommy and Ruth continue their
relationship, even after Ruth belittles Tommy for his new drawings of “small animals.” Tommy
informs Kathy that he is making the drawings in the hopes of having art to submit to
Madame’s Gallery, since he has a new theory: Hailsham students may apply for a deferral of
their caring and donating duty if they can prove they are in loving relationships, and they do
this by showing Madame that their art “matches” the art of their loved one.
Ruth finds the idea ridiculous, however, and Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy later leave the
Cottages to begin work as carers. After many years, Kathy becomes a carer for Ruth, and
Ruth, Tommy, and Kathy go on an outing to see an abandoned boat in a far-off English field.
During this trip, Ruth apologizes to Tommy and Kathy for “keeping them apart,” and urges
Kathy to become Tommy’s carer, so that the two of them might them apply to Madame for a
deferral. Ruth gives Kathy and Tommy Madame’s address and then dies after her second
donation.
Kathy and Tommy become lovers and, after a while, visit Madame in a seaside town, where
they have a conversation with her and Miss Emily about the “truth” of Hailsham. Miss Emily
reveals that Hailsham was an attempt to reform England’s treatment of clones, but that
Hailsham has now been shut down due to lack of funding. Miss Emily also tells them that the
deferral for loved ones never really existed, although this idea has long been a rumour
among students.
On their trip back to Tommy’s treatment center, Tommy gets out of the car and has another
temper tantrum in a field, because he is deeply frustrated at his inability to live with Kathy as
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