Main Test 1# Quotations And Key Info Flashcards
Ishiguro’s quote from interview- whole idea and purpose of the novel
“What does it mean to be human?”
Ishiguro- aspirations for effect of novel on the reader
“I wanted my novel to be one in which any reader might find an echo of his or her own life”
Spider quotes
X3
- ) “but she was afraid of us in the same way someone might be afraid of spiders”
- ) “you’ll get to know how it feels”
- ) “stiffen- as if a pair of large spiders was set to crawl on her”
Animalistic imageries
Spiders
“You poor creatures” -Madame
Painting in Madame’s house significance and link
Links to Tommy’s watercolour painting and spiders
“Covered with cobweb traces”
Miss Emily’s quote about being “properly human”
“There would always be a barrier against seeing you as properly human”
Significance and links to barrier
Electric fences and allusions to camps, pt1
Kings field fences pt3
Barbed wire near boat pt3
Hailshams imagery
Switches between dystopia and utopia
“A shining beacon”
“A dark fringe of trees… they cast a shadow over the whole of Hailsham”
Ruth’s characterisation
Pt1- pretends: games (“I accepted the invisible rein she was holding out- links with friendship)
Pt2- mannerisms if tv and veterans
Pt2- first to face reality: “Junkies, prostitutes, winos, tramps”
“We all know it so why don’t we say it?”
Significance of Ruth’s key quote
Emphasise Ruth’s masked fear
Asyndeton of a semantic field
Overcomes motif of pretending
Climactic
Balloons symbolism pt3 quote
“Securely twisted together in a tight grip… (worries) one of the strings would come unravelled and a single balloon would sail off up into that cloudy sky”
Significance of balloon quotation
Tight grip- ‘they’ controlling students, life planned
One would be unravelled- Ruth dies first
Cloudy sky-heaven?
What does the balloon quotation link to
How all miss Emily’s “hard work had all come undone”
Significance: theme of loss
Unvaluable
Pretending as a motif
“People preferred to believe these organs appeared from nowhere”
How humans behave towards current global issues- prefer to ignore reality to overcome guilt
Ruth as a character uses motif a lot. Disguises her fear by asserting dominant actions
Death
Euphemisms: donor, cared, completing
“A wishful rumour. That’s all it ever was” -short sentences
Memento Mori:” dead tree trunk…hollow and more emaciated” symbolism
“Near the dead hour
Symbol of water to foreshadow inevitable death and clones
“The pool’s filled in now, but the outline’s still there… an example of this unfinished atmosphere”
Subtle, deliberate, ironic
Symbolism of pencil case quotes
X2
“Didn’t we all dream from time to time about one guardian bending the rules and doing something special for us?”
“There was fog and drizzle that day”
Protection at hailsham quotes
Sham meaning
Sham= false and empty meant to be genuine. “Any place beyond hailsham was like a fantasy land”
“Students were being feared in deplorable conditions”
“You were kept away from the worst of those horrors”
Animals
Frog
“Kind of frog-except with a long tail as though part of it had stayed a tadpole”
Symbol of water and friendships quote
“All the suspicions between me and Ruth evaporated”
