Grady Griffin answers “Can anyone explain me why didn't they all...”

Jamila Huseynova asked this question about Never Let Me Go:

Can anyone explain me why didn't they all run away from that place? Because I could not figure out that part.

Grady Griffin There are great answers here and I agree with them all. I believe there is a great degree of psychological imprisonment established. But why are there…moreThere are great answers here and I agree with them all. I believe there is a great degree of psychological imprisonment established. But why are there no considerations that our characters are physically imprisoned too? The entire region could be a sort of penal colony. Other people, non-donors, are there merely to support the economics of the area. There are no other young people there. This is how the donors are easily identified. All the media could be easily controlled. In fact, how do we know the year? From the unreliable narrator? Could be, in this bubble, an establishment of the past is easier to construct. We could be decades from the stated time period. Discarded items and technology would be cheap. Cheap enough to just give to the students. This gives an explanation of the importance of the boat. Why is this such an attraction? The boat is truly something from the outside world. Something they would never have access to otherwise. Finally we give the mental aptitude of our characters too much credit. The forgetfulness of Ruth and the uncontrollable fits of Tommy, may be signs of a below average cognitive abilities. From the eyes of Kathy, who thinks herself normal, this comes off as strange but not damning. The characters themselves have an intuition they are taken from lesser stock. We can believe that operating a car is near the limits of the characters abilities. In fact Ruth, can not drive. If the donors are superficially normal, why would the basis of the gallery be to find out if they had souls? The unreliable narrator is incapable of expressing how she is, in fact, not normal at all.
All this sounds elitist and terrible, but would this not be the world you would construct for human cattle? This book fails on nothing. A beautiful story. Made even more beautiful if you can layer imagination on top of the authors subtleties.(less)

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