Never Let Me Go Quote Analysis

Deception is something that may be done intentionally or unintentionally, either to harm, or to keep from harm. Kazuo Ishiguro in his novel Never Let Me Go, displays various staff members at the boarding school Hailsham, deceiving the students by not telling them directly who they truly are, or what they truly are, and what they were created to do. In this case, the “guardians” were shielding the students from the fact that they are clones created to donate their vital organs and then die. The problem was not that they avoided the topic altogether, but the students had been “told and not told.” As the book states, “The problem, as I see it, is that you’ve been told and not told. You’ve been told, but none of you really understand…” (81) Further along it also states, “...the

We see this in the real world when parents keep certain truths from their children until they are ready, so they can maintain a happy infancy. When they asked the head guardian why they were not allowed to know earlier, the former head guardian responded, “Very well, sometimes that meant we kept things from you, lied to you. Yes, in many ways we fooled you...But we sheltered you during those years, and we gave you your childhoods.” The guardian truly believes that lying in this case, is justified because they granted them a childhood full of happiness. She goes on to say, “You built your lives on what we gave you. You wouldn’t be who you are today if we’d not protected you. You wouldn’t have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn’t have lost yourselves in your art and writing.” (268) In a way, it goes well with the phrase “ignorance is bliss,” because by not knowing that they were different from the outside world at a young age, they had the motivation to work better in everything they did. If they had known they were going to die soon, they would not have