Impossible to let go

The title of the novel "Never let me go" is perhaps the best and most accurate description and summary of the book itself it is possible to compose. Because the book is told by a narrator looking back over her life, this feeling of never letting go is very prominent. Over and over the narrator gives beautiful, meaningful and in depth account of scenes from her life. I novel gives the feeling of a well refined thought process, like Kathy has thought over her life a million times and narrowed the memories and remembered perfectly all the important things. Even when remembering should be unpleasant, she not only does so, but lives never letting go of her initial impressions.

There are several scenes in the novel which illustrate Kathy's inability to move on or create a new life or even idea of life. After she learns from Miss Emily what Hailsham really was and what the gallery was really supposed to mean, she seems to take it all in stride. She is not much disturbed. She seems to be content with the way her life has turned out. Even though she knows that all she worked for was a waste and she has been lied to all her life, she accepts it and continues to live as though it mattered. She does not respond to the information given her. She continues to hold on to her importance as a carer and as a donor in the future.

In a way, Hailsham has completely succeeded in what is was set up to do. The students (all except apparently Tommy) accept that they are different from non-cloned humans. They accept without a struggle that they will be butchered in their prime and their organs given to a shadowy stranger. In another way however Hailsham has failed completely. In one part during her meeting with Tommy and Kathy, Miss Emily praises them for the adults they have become "Look at you both now! You've had good lives, you're educated and cultured." Again there is irony when she says "...we demonstrated to the world that if students were reared in humane, cultivated environments, it was possible for them to grow to be as sensitive and intelligent as any ordinary human being". Are these "students" really well adjusted and as human as they could be? It is normal not to fight for your own life? Is it normal to accept and willingly go to your death at such a young age? Tommy certainly displays some rebellion, but it is momentary and soon buried. Kathy on the other hand, even when she knows at least part of the truth from Miss Emily has no desire to rebel and claim her life as her own. She has no desire to dig deeper, no desire to fight for herself or anyone else.

Kathy is never able to let go of the illusion created for her in her childhood at Hailsham. She accepts as unchangeable fact everything the guardians tell her. Even after she has watched all those she loved die, she is never angry. She mourns quietly but never rebelliously. She never realized that just as all the lies and half-truths she had been told as a child piled up and made her life just like the barbed wire fence at the end. All the lies collected and multiplied. The truth in the end was just another piece of garbage. Instead of washing away the lies, it just added to the pile and therefore wasn't really noticed or dealt with.