Never Let Me Go Dystopia

Dystopian realities strive to create an idealised world in which authorities attempt to fix the dissatisfactions of the societies with methods that create impenetrable consequences. Speculative science fiction novel Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro, details an alternative 1990s England that exploits organ donation through cloning to combat diseases and medical illness. This text conveys that the pursuit of perfection within contemporary society is the most disturbing aspect of a dystopia to a significant extent, instigating the demeaning of individual liberty and autonomy in the future. Through the exploration of regulated knowledge and medical and biotechnological progressions, Ishiguro portrays a society in which clones are deprived …show more content…
Within Never Let Me Go, the exploration of regulated knowledge depicts the restrictive nature of dystopian constructs which inevitably elicit the lack of autonomy in the future, a distressing aspect of dystopian fiction. The text is written in three stages of the protagonist’s life, the first being Hailsham, a rural English boarding school where clones are first educated. Hailsham is an extended metaphor for the restriction of awareness, reflecting Ishiguro’s childhood, …show more content…
Through cloning and the imposition of organ donations, it is evident that clones have a restricted future as a result of such biotechnological advancements. Scientists such as James D. Watson, in the early 1970s, have argued that this predetermined existence of genetically modified beings is dehumanizing and results in unforeseen ethical problems (The President's Council on Bioethics, 2016), challenging the ‘notions of the human’ (Carroll, 2010) (University of Edinburgh, 2015), These ideologies influenced Ishiguro’s personal stance towards cloning, where the abuse of medical advancements and cloning stands to negatively impact clones as it ultimately engenders the forfeiture of identity and early death or ‘completion’ from excessive donations in the future. This loss of autonomy is evident in “We’re modelled from trash. Junkies, prostitutes, winos, tramps…That’s what we come from.”, where a lexical chain reinforces the harsh realities of a ‘clone model’ being stigmatised as a result of their undesirable ‘originals’. This vulnerable mentality imposes the belief that they are incapable of freedom, causing psychological resignation, where the acceptance of each clone’s fate exemplifies the lack of autonomy in the future. This