Never Let Me Go - Quotes Flashcards

(Kathy) “who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you – of how you were brought into this world and why.”

(Kathy) “who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you – of how you were brought into this world and why.”

Themes: Identity, Creation, Science

Chapter 6

(Miss Lucy) “But what you must understand is that for you, all of you, it’s much, much worse to smoke than it ever was for me. You’ve been told about it. You’re students. You’re . . . special.”

Themes: Identity, Creation, Science, Control

(Kathy) ‘‘she [Madame] was afraid of us in the same way someone might be afraid of spiders’’

Themes: Fear, Humanity & Ethics, Identity

(Miss Lucy) ‘‘None of you will go to America, none of you will be film stars. And none of you will be working in supermarkets’’

Themes: Identity, Humanity, Control

(Miss Lucy) “you’ve been told and not told’’

Themes: Control, Education, Memory

(Kathy) ‘‘it was well into October by then, but the sun was out that day’’

Themes: Memory, Humanity

(Tommy) ‘‘jumbled swear-words’’

‘‘burst into thunderous bellows’’

Themes: Identity, Humanity

• Tommy has an absurdist outlook to his fate: accepting it but despairing with small acts of rebellion

• Like temper tantrums that recur throughout his life.

• Like after deferral hope crushed...Ishiguro could be using novel as extended metaphor for death and that we all just accept our fates- despite our despair.

• ALSO Social determinism

(Kathy) ‘‘Tommy never even tried to be creative’’

Themes: Identity, Friendship, Education

• Tommy struggles to fit social expectation and find purpose (art) therefore = ostracism.

• Tommy's inability to fulfil his societal purpose (make art)= ostracism.

• People's worth + how they're treated based on how well they can fulfil the predestined purpose/contribution society has set out for them.

• By showing tommy’s cruel exclusion, Ishiguro argues this is not good.

(Tommy) '‘I got a bit of bleeding and couldn’t go anymore’’

Themes: Science, Control

• Tommy - physically hurt by donations, begs Utilitarianism- suffering of one to save many?

• Allegory for Marxist ideas of alienation

(Kathy) “Our models were an irrelevance, a technical necessity for bringing us into the world, nothing more than that.

Themes: Alienation, Creation, Identity, Science