Are the Clones Real People Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro - Book Report/Review Example

Many people associate cloning with science-fiction novels, not with real life, but animal cloning is a process that is being attempted today all overthe world, and human cloning might be next. Human beings everywhere tell themselves and each other stories that both comfort and frighten them. It's what we do. It's what distinguishes us as a species; there is virtually no other human behavior that hasn't been found in some form in other species. Human beings who aren't telling each other stories in order to frame and manage the most important fact of their lives are just not credible. Never Let Me Go is a story that takes current global debates between science fiction and ethics and, in magnifying one aspect of them, invites us to confront our own confusion. Though never claiming for it to be scientifically conceivable - leaving many credibility questions open to the reader - Ishiguro delves into the issue of how far scientists will go to find cures for diseases. Given that the main burden of the book is that the clones are just as human as we are, and are being used in an inhuman way, this is utterly beyond the bounds of possibility. There is also, apparently, no real outside resistance to the fate of the clones. There is a terribly genteel and polite movement of which Hailsham is a part, making speeches, raising money, and creating foundations to raise the clones in more humane and pleasant conditions, rather than the factory conditions that prevailed before Hailsham and other foundations of its type, and apparently still the norm for most clones. In our world today - where arguments over the age at which life is deemed to be fatal and when it becomes truly human abound. This novel is all the more important, for it demands us to consider our views about playing God. As the novel suggests, scientists are investigating how to prolong our lives and make them more comfortable; but the ethics and morality of their research results are frequently overlooked or sublimated to what is deemed to be the greater good. Initially, it seems as though Ishiguro's main concern is with the ethics of modern science, but gradually, we see the novel modulate into something deeper. Through Kathy's inability to understand the society that has created her Ishiguro illustrates his view that we - humans - live as we are expected to; we do what we can with what we have been given. These issues are important to a lot of people, especially post humanist scholars who are concerned about the use of fetal remains or cloned cells in stem cell research and plain old cloning in general. For many people, the alternate reality of the book, where clones are created so that they can serve as living, breathing and animate organ incubators, is not that far away and elements of are already facing mankind. As I have mentioned, Never Let Me Go is an alternate history from WWII through the late 1990s, when the novel takes place. After WWII, science advanced to the point that full human cloning was possible and people in the late 1990s have become so accustomed to human cloning for organ transplants that they refuse to go back to the world when overdrinking, overeating and smoking meant their livers, hearts and lungs would give out. This the reason why clones of human beings are created, raised from babies-though this is never explained explicitly in the book, I assume it is so because the narrator recalls being a child-until they are old enough to serve as organ donors. Are there baby donors for babies with congenital disorders This is not known either, mainly because Kathy H shows only what directly affects her from the time of when her earliest memories are clear to her. But it stands to reason that in a society that can make adult clones suffer so profoundly baby clones' suffering would mean little to them as well. The cloning technology in the novel is far more advanced than our own, but the analysis of what makes people human and how those who are "human" can turn a blind eye to or even engage outright in the worst sorts of cruelty for their own comfort is the point of the book, not an analysis or comparison of technologies. But whether or not the clones were genetically bred for compliance does not make the scope of their lives any easier. They go to their deaths willingly, if sadly, but in the course of their lives they are raised in a very unnatural way. They are housed like animals, they are deprived the natural human tendencies to form families and units, and they are subjected to mental, emotional and physical pain that are appalling. Yet the clones accept this because they are clones. In many ways, the clones' naivety about the real way the world works makes them seem strangely animal-like, especially their docility in the face of ill-use. But they are nave in other ways that are not animalistic. They think people can read their minds, they think their souls are literally visible in art, and they have little frame of reference as to what their feelings mean-when Kathy experiences sexual desire she has no idea what it is or what she should do. Having been stripped of their humanity the clones are humans with no way of knowing what being naturally human means or feels like. The clones move around non-clones when they choose to and are never seen as what they are-walking organ incubators-by those they interact with. Yet if anyone knew a clone was in their midst, they would be appalled and would shun them. If it is from genuine loathing or the uncomfortable realization that someone recognizably human yet slated for a terrible death just passed as one of them, it is not clear, but it seems very likely the latter would discomfort people. They had to shun the clones to keep them as the "other." However, if it was disgust that made people uneasy around clones, it is the same disgust that allows people to turn up their noses at those who hunt, while petting their dog and laying out a leg of lamb to thaw for dinner. They want their meat distant from them and they are sickened when the reality of it is rubbed under their noses. From the depth of feeling and capacity for higher thought, it was easy to see that the clones-who believe they were cloned from whores, drug addicts and criminals, adding a mental degradation to their lowly status-were no different from "real" humans aside from their passivity and their inability to procreate. If "real" humans learned that, they would have to resign themselves to dying from liver failure instead of killing a clone in order to survive a bit longer. And all of this happens to these decidedly human clones because they have no souls, because no one wants to return to the days when they died either due to natural causes or because of the damage they did to their own bodies. Ishiguro seems to want us to see the clones as real people, but their submission and obsession of duty are incomprehensible. Reference: Ishiguro, K., Never Let Me Go, Published by Vintage International, 2006, ISBN 1400078776, 9781400078776. Read More