Never Let Me Go vs Traditional Retellings of Frankenstein - Essay Example

Never Let Me Go vs. Traditional Retellings of Frankenstein Kazuo Ishiguro understands that people today live in a technological era. This marks the first biggest difference between Ishiguro and Frankenstein. It is becoming increasingly unavoidable especially in the western world to contact and use technology every day. The syndrome continues to spread to other developing regions including Asia, South America, and Africa. Ishiguro comprehends this idea well marking a fundamental difference between his novel, Let Me Go, and retellings provided by Frankenstein. Ishiguro embraces the fact that the GPS system, batteries, cords, phones, computers, devices, as well as other gadgets constitute items of functional expediency (Doane, 1990, 52). However, the convenience demonstrated by the use of these items gradually evolves into dependence because human beings find it compulsory at some point in time and the world continues to evolve in information and communication technology. This discourse delves into analysing the differences between the work of Ishiguro and Frankenstein. People develop and feel a sense of major absence of information and communication technology when provided with a situation of working without gadgets. This comes into perspective closely in this paper as well. Analysis of Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro leads to an understanding that continued reliance of devices for operations makes people uneasy. People appear to be at ease with shortcuts offered by machines because it saves time while performing duties. The same people who depend on the devices are afraid of their inabilities to carry out their expected duties without the devices effectively. When the owner of a Smartphone discovers that the gadget is at home while he or she is at work, it makes him or her panic. This is because it dawns onto the owner that he is cut off from instant messages, from the internet, as well as all the digital maps. The user realizes that he or she will struggle to respond to questions, it will a tough task for him or her to find receipts, interact with people across the globe, and find it difficult to navigate highways. It means clearly that this person’s day becomes scattered with aimless intentions. The Smartphone user looses the regular connection as well as association that the small device creates. Surprisingly, the reliance of people on devices supersedes the use of other wants and needs. In other circumstances, the sense of connection claims duty for every aspect of sustaining life such as breathing and heartbeats. In Let Me Go, the view held by Haraway of the possibilities of biopolitics undertakes a different turn that appears ominous. In this novel, the body of a cyborg takes the position of inhuman appearing like a cloned creature carrying organisms with potential of a person planting them on the farm. Clones in Ishiguro’s creature put together matters of labour, origin, as well as reproduction. This discourse puts into consideration these as the main differences between the work of Kazuo Ishiguro and retold stories by Frankenstein. Clones are figures of anxiety bearing in mind that Ishiguro considers the concept of homelessness as a significant contemporary issue. Ishiguro presents his cyborg as a race of clones. The clones have the physical body similar to that carried by human beings. However, differences among them are not in their body parts but in the functions of the different body parts. People create these clones for various uses of their body parts. This concept is strange to Frankenstein considering that his works constitute retelling of traditional stories that do not embrace changes and advancements in information and communication technology. The fact that clones work differently based on their body parts sets them apart from their creator, man in this context (Shelley, 1818, 13). According to Ishiguro, this provides a perfect definition of them as cyborgs. Kazuo Ishiguro foregrounds the connections of biopolitics and ethics in his novel, Never Let Me Go. The mystery in stories told by Frankenstein comes in the context of traditional creations of the literal definition of myths. However, the mysterious creations created by Ishiguro come in the context of understanding technology. The consequence of advancements in information and communication technology comes out well in the novel written by Ishiguro. Races of cloned human beings presented by Ishiguro come with purpose and existence full of secrecy in the entire childhoods controlled critically until attaining maturity. At this point people need their organs making them become organ donors. The difference in understanding work by Ishiguro and Frankenstein is that the former bases his mysterious secret in technology while the latter operates on stories passed by generations over to the succeeding generations. Reading Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, it is easy to see that the birth and origin of the cyborgs takes place outside the natural share of the same concepts (Haraway, 2008, 76). This is the source of the greatest mystery. This kind of information is abstract to Frankenstein. Man creates them buts does not give birth to them a different aspect from characters in the retold stories of Frankenstein. All the creations lack the trait of familial origin a feat shared by all of them. Ishiguro creates an image that continues to put the state of machines and human beings apart. However, it comes with similarities that make them unrecognizable from humanity. While Frankenstein creates powerful figures from the human perspective in his stories, Ishiguro reimages the human figure and socially reconstructs his clones to create the cyborgs. Instead of feeling and seeing the robot, Ishiguro presents to the reader non-human body differentiated to parts. It would be justified to hold that the author provides this as a social and medical experiment, a feat not present in stories retold by Frankenstein. Developments such as the creator of the cyborg giving it full and inspiring childhood where the same creator as well as humanity applies the artistic potential as a measure of value and success carried by these cyborgs are not present in the stories by Frankenstein. The power in characters designed by the latter seems to carry natural power. Characters created by both authors face different fates. The power in the characters by Ishiguro appears as a mechanism of compensating them for the ugly, horrendous, and painful awaiting them in future. The fate is morbid while the characters by Frankenstein are that of a hero because ultimately they triumph over man. To start with, the narrator Kathy is a cyborg ending as a nurse of carer. She will be responsible for taking of the donors before taking the cue to donate her organs as well. Ishiguro does not do much to bring forth the horrible and pitiable shared experience by Kathy, the narrator. It becomes important to analyse Kathy not as a clone, considering the fact that human clones do not currently exist. The proposal is to have an evaluation of Kathy as an extended product of institutions and families putting into perspective the venerable provided by Ishiguro in his novel. While Kathy makes assumption that all other characters including readers are clones, the same case does not happen in the characters created by Frankenstein. While she assumes that, she is also human while those in the retold stories understand their power and capacity that appears to be beyond human abilities (Ishiguro, 2005, 41). Ishiguro creates a misunderstanding, which the novel hinges upon in the sense that assumptions held by Kathy are both wrong and invalid. She is not human and neither are the readers in the same form with her throughout the novel. Entirely, Never Let Me Go focuses on education about clones. Precisely, mechanisms through which a whole class or social group can learn ways of leading lives through misery as well as loss. On the other hand, stories by Frankenstein are for sheer entertainment. Ishiguro covers modern knowledge surrounding developments in information and communication technology. Complexity in the novel by Ishiguro resonates with the complexity in modern technology similar to creating cyborgs but applying only the functional parts as opposed to using it as a robot. Man creates the cyborgs buts does not give birth to them a different aspect from characters in the retold stories of Frankenstein. All the creations lack the trait of familial origin a feat shared by all of them. Ishiguro creates an image that continues to put the state of machines and human beings apart. However, it comes with similarities that make them unrecognizable from humanity. Works Cited Doane, Mary Ann. "Technophilia: Technology, Representation, and the Feminine." 1990. Print. Haraway, Donna Jeanne. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Print. Ishiguro, Kazuo, Never Let Me Go. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Print. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus. 1818. Print. Read More