CONTEXT Flashcards
1
A
- Most of Ishiguro’s work is based on ‘dramatic irony’, this means that the reader knows more about the narrator’s life than the narrator does.
- It is seen to be used in Never Let Me Go since the reader learns and understands about the novel’s alternative universe through Kathy’s description.
- Ishiguro was once a social worker, which is a similar profession to caretakers that are also considered social workers.
2
Q
Historical
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- When Ishiguro was writing his novel during the beginning of the 21st century, it was the period of fast-moving period of development especially in the biological and medical sciences.
- The novel is based in the 1990s, during the period where the Western World began using cloning. The first ‘clone’ was Dolly the Sheep. Whilst, in US ‘stem-cell research’ was becoming popular especially used for medical purposes. The stem cells would be taken from an undeveloped zygote and used to generate cellular materials for the organs of fully-grown adults.
- The rapid development emerged discussions regarding mankind’s moral obligation to cellular life
- However, Never Let Me Go pushes the boundaries as it discusses a common widespread system of organ-farming.The lives of the students revolve around care-taking their organs for ‘real’ humans, whilst the biological and ethical reasons have emerged in the background. Although, the foreground there is a human story of the clones using love, loss and their maturation.
- Ishiguro brings the Japanese origins, such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the information and knowledge of the bomb was out there in a similar way the information and knowledge about the clones was out there, thus you would not be able to take the destructive scientific knowledge away as it is already out there
3
Q
Ishiguro’s Education
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- He had two degrees
- He was educated in Norfolk
- Humanizing Education- the clones are given a ‘model human’ education focused on aesthetic experiences.
- Ishiguros knowledge provides a critique of western educational practices.
- Education is the process of turning people into humans.
4
Q
Society / political
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- Miss Emily “fear motivates people”
- After the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, Erikson says, instead of mobilizing people with hopeful messages, the message from the U.S. government was one of fear.
- The fear that the American people felt, he says, motivated them to believe faulty intelligence and support the invasion of Iraq, which resulted in thousands of deaths and the further destabilizing of the Middle East.
- The Red Scare, which was the fear of communist subversion,caused Americans to reevaluate their daily interactions and beliefs. The possibility of nuclear annihilation also loomed after observing the tests of both nations’ nuclear arsenals.
5
Q
NARRATION
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- NLMG lacks the sentimental novels resolute closure wherein the hero or heroine and all other questionable identities are positively established, the continuous annomity of the ‘donors’
- Slave narratives typically begin and end with declarations of the veracity of their testimony’s the reader is reminded that their account is accurate.
- Kathy does none of that she openly admits the events as she remembers them. In aboloists slavery narratives, rebellion and subversion occur through the novel. The clones they are private and undirected they try to escape their fate
- kathys narrative gap
6
Q
Human rights quarterly
A
- Concept of. Individuals – an autonomous, natural entity are significant with the tech of genetic emerginering, splicing and replication, the human individuality is no longer tenable in any naïve sense of word.
- Ishiguro proposes an account of human individuality that distances itself from philological traditions that essentialise feelings and faculty of reason as inherit indications of the soul.
- The shock for nlmg readers is the fact that the humans are clones Ishiguro distinguishes his post genomic agenda from the Victorian inspired program of the guardians.
- The guardians want to prove the clones are humans Ishiguro on the other hand demonstrates that the individuality of these clones do not depend on the intrinsic properties of a soul but on each clone emotional singularity
7
Q
Alternate Universe and Realism
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- Ishiguro employs an alternate universe within the novel.
- Through narrator Kathy H’s description of her life, readers learn about this universe.
- Unlike typical science fiction, Ishiguro doesn’t create a futuristic setting. Instead, he reinforces realism by placing the story in a familiar environment.
- This break from genre conventions allows him to address problematic issues that humans have long struggled with, all within a recognizable context
8
Q
Other Authors and Realism
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- Ishiguro’s approach of using a recognizable environment instead of a futuristic setting is not unique.
- American novelist Kim Stanley Robinson believes we’re living in a big science fiction novel due to technological progress.
- Early science fiction writers like H.G. Wells predicted future technology, and modern authors continue to explore realistic scenarios
9
Q
Ishiguro on The Guardian newspaper,
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- “The sort of England I now wanted was one of grey skies, flat, bare fields, drab streets, abandoned farms, empty roads. Apart from the narrator’s childhood memories, around which I might allow a little sun and vibrancy, I wanted an England drained of all bright [colors].”
10
Q
Rural England in the 1980s and 1990s
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- Kazuo Ishiguro intentionally sets the novel at this time because he wants the overall mood of the setting to mirror his own experience growing up in England.
- The Thatcher years were a time of resistance to change, a focus on material wealth, and major cutbacks in public services.
- country went into deep recession in the early 1980s.
- Ishiguro’s decision to set Never Let Me Go in rural England at that time focuses on the feeling of abandonment prevalent in rural areas and thus highlights the isolation of his characters from society.
