Skip to main content

How does Ishiguro represent Kathy in Never Let Me Go?

This is a big question, one that drives a lot of the novel's tension. First of all, if you haven't already done so, you should definitely read Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go because it is a beautiful, powerful, and strange story. 


Kathy is the first-person narrator of Never Let Me Go, so right away Ishiguro gives us an intimate connection to Kathy, as well as seemingly complete access to her thoughts. Kathy controls how we view the entire story and its characters, including her own character.


Kathy's POV, however, can be frustrating at times. Ishiguro, through Kathy's narration, depicts Kathy as rather hesitant and unsure. Many times throughout the story, Kathy doubts the quality of her own memory, telling us that she can't be sure the way she recalls something is how it actually happened. Kathy's actions and life events, however, starkly contrast with her hesitant storytelling—Kathy is one of the oldest carers, and therefore one of the story's survivors (again, if you haven't read the story, I really don't want to spoil it for you by revealing more!). Kathy also describes to us the decisive way she moves forward in her life, telling us,"...I made my decision, and once I'd made it, I never wavered. I just got up one morning and told Keffers I wanted to start my training to become a carer." Thus, Ishiguro brilliantly places Kathy's narration at odds with her actual actions, disorienting the reader and revealing Kathy's unassuming and self-effacing nature.


Though Kathy seems to lack confidence in her storytelling at times, the events of the story and the ways in which Ishiguro contrasts her with the other characters, also reveal how stoic and strong she is. Because of her stoicism and strength (and because of the nature of the world in which the book takes place) Kathy tends to downplay the horrific details of some of the story's events. This tends to throw us readers off, and as a result, it takes us a bit longer to realize how terrible the story's situation really is.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more