Never Let Me Go and 1984

        Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is an outstanding novel about a dystopia where clones are raised to become organ donors. As we were reading this novel, I was constantly reminded about George Orwell’s 1984. I noticed similarities primarily in the settings of the two novels since the environments were extremely important in the develop of the characters in both novels.

         George Orwell’s 1984 is set in a world where there are only three large nations left that are all isolated from each other and where there is always a war raging between two out of three of the nations. Readers follow Winston, a member of the nation of Oceania, as he starts to question the society and consider rebelling. The majority of the population of Oceania, known as the Outer Party, is governed by the Party and they are taught to obey and love Big Brother, their ruler. The people in this society are constantly, and rather creepily, under surveillance and the “history” of this world is constantly being altered by the government. People have to accept what the Party tells them is the past because they have no concrete evidence to prove otherwise. Although the students in Never Let Me Go did not seem to have as many strict rules they had to abide by, the students started out in an isolated world where their main sources of information were authoritative figures and this is may be why they cannot bring themselves to rebel or run away from their assigned fates.

         The Party is able to brainwash most of the population to “love” the Party and Big Brother by manipulating documented history to create a situation where this love becomes almost instinctual. Memories are unreliable because they can be twisted, changed, lost over time. It’s even possible that some memories are just figments of your imagination. Ways that people usually use to confirm that their memories are true are through confirmation with either somebody that shares the same memory or finding some source of physical evidence. Neither is available to the Outer Party members because of the Party’s prevention of them from communicating with one another and their tampering with all documented history. Because of this, people such as Winston become doubtful of their sanity because they fear that their memories might just be figments of their imaginations. Most people will readily accept whatever the Party tells them happened in the past rather than go insane from trying to figure out whether they are insane or not. In other words, humans like to stay in a comfort zone that consists of what they have been taught and what they have experienced throughout their lives.

          While Winston did make a failed attempt to rebel against his society, Kathy and other students did little to try to escape their fates. Winston had at least some experiences from before his society became a dystopia. This is probably the reason why the severe isolation of individuals in his society was slightly less effective at brainwashing him and he was slightly less hindered to try to escape his comfort zone. It’s a shame that Winston still ended up being brainwashed even further in the end and started simply accepting his fate as it was dictated by the society. A likely reason that Kathy and other students chose to accept their destinies may be because they rather stay in their comfort zones that they have developed through years of being raised as donors. Beating somebody is not an effective way of making them obedient. Punishments for crimes and wrongdoings have been shown to be very limited to convincing a person to not to do something again. Even though it was not their intention, the guardians at Hailsham were very effective at teaching their students that it is natural and right for them to be organ donors by essentially making donations a central part of their education. This is especially obvious when we take a look at Tommy. As mentioned in class, Tommy even seems to find a little bit of dignity in being a good donor.

       Although the environment of 1984 is like a severe version of Hailsham, It was interesting to see how the isolation factors in both 1984 and Never Let Me Go affected the characters. I am still shocked that Kathy and Tommy didn’t try to escape or rebel in any way after their conversation with Madame and Miss Emily though. Even so, I see that this could be Ishiguro’s way of telling us several things. Ishiguro might be suggesting that we question the information we receive more, that we should not place as many limitations on ourselves, and that we should try to step out of our comfort zones at times.