Barbara Njau breaks down Never Let Me Go's three main characters: Kathy the unreliable narrator, charismatic Ruth, and bullied Tommy. The novel explores time, memory, and whether clones deserve the same moral status as humans, using symbols like the boat (mortality) and the song (loss) to anchor its questions about what makes a life matter.
Hello and welcome to the second of our two part video summary on the novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Make sure you check out video number one, where we examine the context as well as a summary of this novel. And in this video we'll be examining the key themes, symbols and characters. So, to begin, with respect to the characters, the first main key character is Cathy, who's the protagonist. She's 31, she's a carer for other clones and we learn that she wants to make sense of her memories before she begins donating and before she dies. We find that she has a deep sense of nostalgia. She longs for the past and she's quieter in childhood, in contrast to her friend Ruth, who's much more noisy and much more outgoing and gregarious. Ruth is the other key character, so she's Cathy's best friend from her childhood. She's really charismatic. However, she's also very moody and temperamental. She likes to be at the centre of attention, she likes to stand out, and she often makes things up as a way to hide things or to boost her appearance. The other important character is Tommy, who is Ruth and Kathy's childhood friends. He really struggled with being creative as a child and this was important in Havisham boarding school where creativity was really emphasised and he really didn't fit in as a result of this. And he would get bullied often and he lashed out because of this. Tommy always seems convinced that there are things people aren't telling him and he's just curious to find out the truth. Now, when it comes to the themes, the first is a theme of time. Time is all about loss in this novel. The characters know they will die young and the inevitability of their death is ever present. The deferrals. So the idea that they could defer giving up their vital organs and thus defer their deaths really show this desire that all the clones have to essentially stop time, or at least buy up more of it in order to live for a longer. However, a deferral can only extend time, but not stop it. And death for everybody in this novel is inevitable. And the same desire for eternal life or to slow down time is what started a donation program to begin with amongst humans. So the reason why they have these clones is down to their reason to extend their own lives. So if one of their vital organs dies, another clone can be used as a sacrifice in order to extend their time. So this desire for eternal life is really emphasized through this theme. Memory is another important theme. So Kathy holds her memories close. Even the title references memory Never let me go. Memories are Kathy's only way of holding on to everything that she's lost. But even they are not always complete and perfect. We also note that we live the story through Kathy and her memories. The story is told retrospectively, so it's told through her past and through her memory and her nostalgia. And the one thing we find is Cathy is not always a reliable narrator because memories are not always a good representation of what actually happened. The other important theme is human life. So the clones are essentially not human, and the story tries to grapple with this concept. That being said, even if they're not technically human, they experience all of the same emotions that any human being would have in their short lives. This calls into question the morality of killing them and perhaps treating them as subhuman just because they're clones. The artwork becomes a vessel through which the clones can show that they do have souls, much like humans. In terms of analysis, the title itself is interesting because this song, and this is what the title is derived from, is really at the heart of the novel. Kathy gets a cassette tape of this song as a child, and the song appears multiple times throughout the novel, such as when her and Tommy hold another after learning the deferrals are not real and when she loses the tape itself. This foreshadows the many losses that Cathy will have to endure as time goes on. The other important symbol is the boat. The crumbling boat that the group sees when they are on a trip to Norfolk, really signifies mortality. The boat looks like a skeleton and it's been destroyed by the passage of time, much in the same way that the characters lives have been destroyed by time. The open plan office is another interesting theme, or rather an interesting symbol. So this open plan office is revealed when Ruth, who is told that her possible I. E. The person from which her clone is derived, is in this office. So they go and see her, and she's set in an open plan office in Norfolk. And Ruth becomes obsessed with the idea of working in an open plan office. And this symbolizes the wishes the characters have about a future which they'll never have, given that they're clones. This open plan office again appears on a billboard where Ruth gives Cathy Madame's address. And this ignites hope again of a possible future. But this future is extinguished and Ruth does die as a result of her donations. And also she never meets her possible, I. E. The person from whom she's cloned. So that's all for the analysis and the themes and the key characters. If you found this video useful, do subscribe and give us a thumbs up. But also visit www.firstratetutors.com for in depth revision, worksheets and model essays on this novel. Make sure you check out Part one where we look at the context and summarise details of the novel. Thank you for listening.
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