The Bookhouse Boys discussion
Never Let Me Go Schedule/Discussion
date
newest »
newest »
Mod
That's the thing about the book that troubled me for so long... without a single example, anywhere, of a clone actively questioning the system, it's hard for the reader to imagine them being capable of it as a race. Jason made the point during Midaq Alley that, if there's a single example of a homosexual in the book, and he's vile and venomous, that's all we have to go on as far as our perception of what the author is trying to say about homosexuals. Maybe it's just the one guy, or maybe that one guy represents all homosexuals. It gets even harder to make those distinctions when dealing with fictional creatures like clones... it's as though, on the surface, we're being told that they aren't mentally capable of asking these questions at all.
Our most compelling piece of evidence to the contrary is that the narrative exists at all, I think. Kath felt a need to write, to record, her life. It's a sad and uninteresting life in a lot of ways, but she needs to write it down, because she wants other people to know that she and her friends mattered as something other than organ farms. It gets back to that question of the nature of art in validating life. Unfortunately, much of Kath's narrative is an imitation of life, looking at how the humans live and trying to act like them even though it doesn't come to them naturally. The validation of the lamps, pretending to laugh at the sitcom. Even the book itself is relatively cold and soulless, like just recording English words and events gets the idea across. They don't really understand. The debate then becomes whether they're incapable of understanding, or whether they're merely the product of their conditioning. Later events in the book suggest the latter.
Mod
A few things, hopefully kept brief:
I do think of Kath as an unreliable narrator. She often seems to be carefully choosing what she tells us and how she tells it, informing us that "this" is how things really happened, and it might have seemed "that" way to us, but it really wasn't. She's the person you wouldn't tell the escape plan to because she'd turn you in, convincing herself in the process that she'd done it to protect you and to keep the group together. She feels special and important in her role as a clone, and that's more important to her than avoiding the grisly fate that awaits them all.
Jen and Dave both invoked the Holocaust as an example of how people can blindly follow along and do horrible things. I won't argue that many people did...but there are many documented cases of Germans and members of other countries hiding Jews and helping them to escape Europe. Loudly denouncing Hitler would have been futile, not to mention fatal, but that doesn't mean everyone went along. Like Dave, I have trouble with the idea that no one dissented, either for or against the clones. It's not as if they were hard to reach. That spooky forest wouldn't have deterred people not conditioned to fear it. The carers couldn't have been that difficult to identify as they went about their business.
Even if we accept that the clones are so well conditioned that they wouldn't consider escape or resistance, and even if we accept that the entire world (yes, world; they are planes in 1990, right?) is willing to go along with it, I still don't buy that the powers that be would allow their charges so much freedom to move around, with zero monitoring.
Finally, I don't think we can conclude that clones are incapable of questioning their fate. If clones can come up with the idea of deferring their donations, completely on their own, that idea could gradually evolve to "what if we defer them...forever?" What would prevent that train of thought? If a dog can think he'd like to beaten less, he can think he'd like to not be beaten at all. I also look at Tommy's rages as evidence that clones are not all blandly accepting of what awaits them. Yes, his rages are ultimately ineffectual. He can't see a solution, much like Ruth didn't when they were badgering her about giving up too soon on her possible. But the feelings for both of them are there.
Mod
Sara wrote: "Great discussion everyone!"
Jason wrote: "This has been one of my favorite books that we've done simply because of the robust discussion it has generated."
I'm very pleased with the discussion on this one, too. We finally got a (book) thread above a 50 post-count! WOOHOO! Thanks to everybody who chimed in with their thoughts/feelings/etc.
The Bookhouse Boys
Books mentioned in this topic
Room (other topics)Rabbit, Run (other topics)
Infinite Jest (other topics)
Hey! We're real! ;)
I'll second yr whole post, Jen. This was my position throughout this book (and the show) on the docility of the clones. This was no experiment. There had been generations (and twice that number of clone generations) of motivated scientists who got this "right" off camera/out of our scope. Trial and error was used to find the what they could be told when in order to condition them to accept their roles. This method clearly worked. The most you see out of the current crops are: manipulative-ness, tantrums, and burnout, with a side order of attempted deferral.
Also, you're spot-on with racism analogy. I immediately thought of religion. I've heard 2-year-olds say that Jesus is their best friend when they're (in my opinion) far too young to have any conceptual understanding of what a "Jesus" is.