never let me go Flashcards
1
Q
chapter 1
A
- novel is set in 1990’s in an alternate version of england
- kathy h is narrating (former hailsham student)
- kathy now works as a carer, as if she’s narrating to other carers
- has been a carer for 12 years and ‘doesn’t want to brag’
- says carers aren’t usually in the job for that long, but it’s because she’s good
- says her donors tend to do well after their 3rd or 4th donation
- says she can choose people who she cares for and chooses people from hailsham school a lot (usually people can’t choose, she gets the benefit)
- she was a carer for ruth, who also went to hailsham though they fell out
- considers herself lucky to have gone to hailsham
- she thinks about the school a lot, and in particular the pavilion they all used to love
- school has now shut down
- talks about tommy who wore his special polo shirt he bought in a resale when playing football, keeps a close eye on him as she was upset for him if he got it dirty
- people play a joke on tommy, who has a bad temper, by picking him last for the football, even though he’s a good player - he goes into a fit of rage (which he has a lot), getting himself muddy
- kathy intercepts him by saying he got his favourite polo shirt dirty (v observant), he thanks her but says it’s none of her business
- ends up accidentally hitting kathy in his temper - kathy leaves him saying that she managed to calm him down a bit
- the concerns for tommy hitting ruth is because they need to protect their bodies as they’re clones and eventually donate organs to others
2
Q
chapter 2
A
- kathy explains how tommy came up to her in the queue when they were waiting to get their ‘medical checkups’ done (checking if they’re healthy enough for donations), which is weekly
- he wants to apologise for hitting her
- kathy says their 13 at this point
- kathy is embarrassed by tommy coming up to her that publicly although she continues to worry about him as he is getting bullied
- lots of students resent tommy for not being creative and as he rarely puts any art in the spring exchange (where the students go to exchange their artworks)
- in the rooms at night, on one of their late night talks, kathy brings up tommy and how she’s concerned about him
- ruth agrees that other boys are cruel to him but says he could change his attitude and start contributing
- flashes forward in present time, kathy and ruth talking bout exchanges and ruth remembers a lot of the art at the exchanges was very good, they both say how apart from the exchanges and the sales there wasn’t a way for students to have their own personal possessions
- kathy flashes forward again, when she’s caring for tommy who was one of her donors, they talk about a meeting in art class with miss geraldine who liked tommy
- tommy was embarrassed about how he couldn’t paint but miss geraldine praised his elephant in the long grass picture infront of everyone, which made it worse - all the students hated him for the special treatment he got
- kathy remembers how tommys temper never got better but slowly began to disappear
- flashes forward to the lunch line a few months after tommys tantrum on the fields, they talk and he says how he’s grown up more now and how miss geraldine said it was okay to not be creative which makes him confident but confuses kathy
- they plan to meet later that day
3
Q
chapter 3
A
- kathy meets tommy at pond, which gives them privacy
- kathy tries to get info from tommy about miss lucy who is one of the sympathetic guardians
- miss lucy told tommy that if he can’t help not being creative, that’s okay
- miss lucy seem angry and enraged by tommy being so worried about creativity
- she says how ‘we should be taught more’ about the goings on in hailsham (e.g donations and cloning etc)
- kathy and tommy start to conspire about the madame and the going’s on at hailsham and start talking about the ‘gallery’ and how it works
- kathy goes to the present and tells the reader about the gallery, saying how madame comes into hailsham every so often and chooses certain prime examples of the students art (poems, paintings, sculptures) but the students never know what it’s actually for only that it was a great honour to be selected for it
- kathy flashes back to a memory at hailsham of ruth saying she thought the madame was afraid of them (when talking at night in their dorms), and they decide to put this theory to the test to see if it’s true
- once they see the madame they swarm around her all saying hi
- they notice how nervous madame is getting and how it’s seems like she’s worried they’ll touch her, all the girls notice how she seems ‘shaken’ by the experience
- one of them asks why madame would want their art if she finds them
repulsive - from that experience, they all begin to see how their lives at hailsham would be very different and separate to the lives of others - as if they’re marked off for another kind of life
4
Q
chapter 4
A
- kathy details an event at hailsham when she was around 10 which she calls ‘the tokens controversy’
- she says that at an early age students began wanting to own their own things more, wanting to build ‘collections’ of small objects, which were traded at the sale and the exchange
- some students had their work taken away by madame for inclusion in her gallery, when this happened some students demanded they got tokens if their work was taken
- miss emily was surprisingly willing to give the students some tokens as compensation but also said it was ‘a great honour’
- when the tokens thing gets brought up later in a class with miss lucy, she says madame takes their art away for ‘a very good reason’ and how it will all be explained sooner or later to them
- that ends the tokens controversy as they don’t feel comfortable talking about it
- kathy describes the sales as being able to buy from the outside world
- the objects would tend to be mundane (scissors, old shirts) but the students adored them and the guardians would occasionally have to shut down the sales as students got in fights over things
- sometimes miss emily would give long speech’s in assembly’s telling them that they’re special and should behave better and be worthy of their privilege
- everyone was scared of miss emily but hardly anyone understood what she was saying
- kathy then talks about becoming friends with ruth and playing a make believe game of riding horses
- they play for ages and ruth tells kathy that she can enter the group who are protecting miss geraldine
5
Q
chapter 5
A
- kathy days that at age 7 for about 9 months ruth encouraged the other girls to believe that there was a kidnapping plot against miss geraldine and how miss eileen and mr roger’s were in charge and somehow the woods surrounding hailsham was the location of the kidnapping
- the other girls all seemed to realise the fantasy was of ruth’s doing and they all kept it going as long as possible
- kathy gives another example to show ruth’s willingness to persist in fantasy about the chess
- ruth pretended she knew everything about chess so kathy saved up a lot of tokens to buy a chess set so they could play
- it became clear ruth didn’t know the rules and had been lying about her chess knowledge so kathy got angry and ran out and had later found out she had been kicked out of miss geraldine’s secret guard by ruth
- kathy runs into moira who was also kicked out of the secret guard, moira says how stupid the whole idea is but kathy defends ruth and gets angry, kathy still wonders to present day why she got so defensive even after ruth snubbed her
- kathy tells the readers about a time she tried to call ruth out about a pencil case she supposedly got as a gift from miss geraldine
- kathy realised that no guardian would bend the rules to give a student a special gift and that she probably got it from a sale
- kathy goes through and looks at records of the sales and is right, she mentions it to ruth and was alarmed and upset
- kathy realised her pettiness and felt v guilty so tries to correct situation by pretending to ruth that she saw nothing interesting
- ruth walks away from kathy
6
Q
chapter 6
A
- kathy feels guilty about hurting ruth’s feelings and does everything to make ruth feel that she is treated specially by miss geraldine, indicates to other girls that ruth is her favourite and hints to them that the pencil case was from a guardian but how she can’t say any more info
- ruth appreciates kathy’s efforts and wants to repay the kindness, chance comes when kathy loses her tape
- kathy explains how norfolk was seen as a lost corner of england and how all of your lost things were there so you go there to find them
- kathy wonders if they all actually believed in the lost corner and concludes when being tommys carer that they were but only for a time as they knew it was only symbolic and not literal
- kathy goes on a tangent about her list tape, saying how it was called songs after dark by judy bridgwater released in 1956, she had the cassette version and how her favourite song was called never let me go
- the cover on the front was of a woman smoking, kathy then talks about how smoking was against the rules at hailsham as especially haisham students can’t smoke as it’s more bad for them (implying it damages their organs)
- kathy says how she imagined the song never let me go to be about a woman who can’t have kids but miraculously does have one and how it seems like a love letter to a young baby
- one day when she is listening to the song, she holds a pillow to her chest as if cradling a baby and madame walks by, and is crying watching her - kathy didn’t understand why but madame walks away sobbing
- years later kathy told tommy and tommy said at the time she knew that none of the students can have kids, kathy wondered whether madame sympathised with her for this reason
- a few weeks after the madame incident kathy says how the tape disappeared from her collection, she wondered whether it had anything to do with the madame’s sadness
- a few weeks later ruth gives her a replacement tape that she thought she might like - even though ruth doesn’t know the types of music are very different
- kathy says how she still has it now and although it sounds nothing like her never let me go tape it’s one of her most precious possessions
7
Q
chapter 7
A
- kathy says how the convo with tommy at the ponds was a marker between the eras at hailsham (not knowing and then being more curious)
- before this time it was a golden period when worries of the world didn’t intrude but after kathy and her friends realised their worlds were predetermined
- kathy talks about a convo with miss lucy where the teacher acknowledges that other schools like hailsham could have electric fences to keep students in, refers to real world events when she said the electric fences caused terrible accidents(when hearing about two boys joking about concentration camps and being able to kill yourself with the electric fences)
- kathy says how miss lucy was different from other guardians and a convo in the pavilion proved it
- the class were there hiding from the rain and some students are talking about dream jobs (acting, shopkeeping) but miss lucy stops them from going further and makes speech about how none of them will go to america and have acting careers, and explains how their lives are only here for purpose of donating organs
- the students are confused as to why she’s so emotional as they all kind of know their fates, by age 13
- kathy and tommy talk about this later, when she is his carer and tommy says how hailsham could have prepared its students for their fates and how he thinks they carefully planned when they gave them the info of donations but always were too young to understand what it really meant
- miss lucy’s outburst reminded the students of something they already knew and which they’d already got comfortable with
- kathy talks about sex and how none of them can have children and miss emily talks about sex and how different it is for hailsham students and the outside world, talks about sex as if it’s only purpose is to have kids and not just for pleasure
- kathy talks about the elbow zipping with tommy, when he got a cut on his elbow and all the students teased him, saying his elbow could unzip if he didn’t keep it straight
- tommy was v worried about it and asked kathy to help him splint it straight for him, but he finds out they’d all been joking - unzipping becomes students slang for donations
- ending of chapter is kathy and tommy talking about why they didn’t read into miss lucy and how much she risked at the time to tell them about their futures
8
Q
chapter 8
A
- kathy notes that during the final year at hailsham (at age 16) things got mixed up and confused
- some of this is to do with the fact that they’re going to leave school soon and their careers as caters and donors aren’t far off
- she also talks about being teenagers and now knowing too much about the world or themselves
- kathy tells the readers that one day she walking into a room and saw miss lucy furiously scribbling out what seemed to be students handwriting
- she didn’t stop when kathy came in and kathy wondered later what she was trying to black out
- kathy mentions that other students begin having very obvious sex lives and that hailsham rules seemed quite ambiguous to do with sex
- ruth and tommy became an item (which is why things got messed up - kathy loves tommy!!)
- although ruth and tommy’s relationship was hard tommy becomes more withdrawn than he had in years - he seems more sullen as he was when he threw tantrums
- kathy resolved that she would begin having sex and picked a boy called henry as her ‘mate’ not because she liked him but because she wanted to practise
- kathy wondered how the other students were having so much sex since they couldn’t in the dorms and since they have so little time to be alone
- kathy wonders whether hailsham students at the time were exaggerating the nature of their sex lives to seem cool
9
Q
chapter 9
A
- kathy talks about how she went courting with henry and how she told him that she wanted to have sex with him but then kept running to him later saying she couldn’t have sex ‘at the moment’
- henry seemed okay with this but kathy wonders if in her narration whether henry wasn’t completely confused by her behaviour (they know she’s the natural successor- tommy and kathy should be together)
- kathy realises that she delayed having sex with henry because of her feelings for tommy who ruth broke up with recently
- weeks later ruth told kathy how she’d made a mistake with tommy and that they’re meant to be together - she asked kathy if she could talk some sense into tommy and convince him to get back together with her
- kathy is hurt by this but also wants to help her friend and is please that tommy trusts her so much
- kathy agrees to talk to him
- kathy talks to him and tommy tells her about his interaction with miss lucy about how she said creativity did matter and that she was wrong
- tommy and kathy are perplexed about these words as they don’t know how art could be used as evidence and wonder what value there is for him
- kathy brings up him and ruth and tommy considers getting back together with him
- kathy learns that miss lucy left hailsham and won’t be coming back
- kathy wonders why this is and she goes to tell tommy who already knows
- ruth and tommy get back together and ruth is please but kathy is taking it very hard
10
Q
chapter 10
A
- kathy begins part 2 talking about the essays that the hailsham students were meant to do as a departing assignment
- kathy chose to write on a victorian novel and though it didn’t count for anything it was designed to occupy the students minds before their stay at the cottages
- ruth, tommy and kathy and several other students all went to the sam cottages
- the cottages are basically like college for the students, they have more freedoms but still need to sign in and out when they leave (they have first years and second years)
- kathy refers to the second years as veterans
- kathy describes jeffers the grumpy maintenance man who cares for the cottages who complains that the students aren’t doing their chores correctly
- when the students first got there they were scare of all the freedom they have and the lack of guardians though the scene at the cottages were quite idyllic and have discussions about sex and companionship
- kathy notices that ruth has changed her behaviour around the veteran couples including around chrissie and rodney
- ruth imitates their mannerisms in a certain way by touching their boyfriends when saying goodbye
- ruth thinks it’s mature, kathy realises ruth is beginning to fake all the knowledge about books that she supposedly read
- kathy is reading and ruth goes up to her, spoiling the plot and kathy becomes angry by this and brings up why ruth is touching tommy like the other veterans do with their couple - ruth denies it and says that she’s been promiscuous with some of the other veteran boys
11
Q
chapter 11
A
- kathy says that ruth’s comment really stung her as they have private chats in their rooms when at the cottages and during one of the chats kathy asks ruth if she gets urges to have sex with someone
- kathy feels like because she gets these urges there is something wrong with her and ruth says how she thinks kathy’s urges are weird
- kathy has several one nighters with boys from the cottages and although sex is more grown up, kathy realised that it is still a taboo topic (when ruth shames her for the one night stands)
- kathy writes that at the time ruth appeared to be trying hard to mature quickly to lead other hailsham students into maturity
- kathy says that ruth told her much later that she never held onto her collection from hailsham and got keffers to throw them away, kathy held onto hers and finds ruth’s lack of nostalgia is strange but typical of her
- later on, kathy discovers the stash of porn magazines that a guy called steve used to have (which the clones label as ‘steve’s mags’ so they don’t feel shame about looking at them)
- one day kathy takes a stack and is looking intensely at them (trying to find her possible, which she associates with the possible could be a porn star - outcast of society)
- tommy finds her and senses that there’s a deeper reason for why she’s doing it but she doesn’t explain
12
Q
chapter 12
A
- later on, during the first winter at the cottages, ruth tells kathy that the veterans, chrissie and rodney think they saw ruth’s possible when on a trip in norfolk
- kathy tells the reader that a ‘possible’ means potential ‘clone parent’ for one of the clones, meaning the potential model for which the cloned DNA was taken from
- kathy says that finding a possible was talked about a lot at the time during the cottages - romanticising their future lives and what they could have been like
- kathy is skeptical about the idea of ruth’s possible and thinks that chrissie could be playing with ruth
- this is because chrissie and rodney said they saw her in a glass fronted office which was ruth’s ‘dream future’ which she saw on the front of a magazine - v similar
- kathy tells the readers how one day her and ruth were walking to get something for the cottages (with money given to them to spend) when ruth saw a magazine lying in the frozen dirty ground and ruth said how the job seemed like a great way to spend your life
- kathy begins to notice how ruth describes her dream closely to the image of the ad, in the cottages
- chrissie, rodney, tommy, ruth and kathy all go on a trip to norfolk to track down ruth’s possible
- chrissie and rodney seem very interested in the 3 of them as they are hailsham students, and any clones who didn’t go to hailsham knew the large amount of privilege they all had - in comparison to them
13
Q
chapter 13
A
- they all pile into a borrowed car and set off for norfolk
- rodney and chrissie are at the front and ruth, kathy and tommy at the back
- ruth sits in the middle but spends most of her time leaning in to talk to the 2 at the front, leaving tommy and kathy to not be able to talk to eachother at all
- they stop to stretch their legs and kathy asks ruth if she could switch seats so her and tommy could talk - ruth is angry and remains sullen the rest of the journey
- the group find a cafe at norfolk for lunch, chrissie and rodney reveal that they’ve spent months talking about getting a deferral
- a deferral is when couples can prove that they’re properly in love and get their donations deferred by 2/3 years
- this wasn’t something taught at hailsham but chrissie and rodney seem to think the others would know all about it so ask ruth loads of questions
- ruth plays along with it but tommy is confused as says how he has no idea what they’re talking about, ruth snaps at him and says how he’s too slow for the complex convos spoken about at hailsham
14
Q
chapter 14
A
- kathy tells the reader how the tension of the group carried on when they got to norfolk
- they all went to woolworths as chrissie and rodney like to stock up on cheap bday cards (the clones have never been shopping before so it seems alien to them, veterans have more experience)
- kathy overhears ruth telling the couple about the deferrals, she pretends to not be listening but ruth spots her and is angry
- they all walk around norfolk as rodney leads the way to ruth’s possible, they get lost a few times but finally rodney finds it
- they spot the possible and see that she does look a lot like ruth, the other office workers wave at them but the clones run away, giggling
- they loiter around and then tommy spots how the possible is walking down the street, so they follow her
- she goes into an art gallery called ‘portway studios’
- the clones go in and listen to the possible talking to another women in there, the more they listen the less she seems like ruth
- the possible leaves and the women starts to talk to the clones, asking if they’re art students, they crowd around her like she’s a guardian
- they leave and kathy notices a huge change in mood has occurred
- tommy tried to lighten the mood saying it was just a bit of fun but ruth is enraged and says how all along she thought it was a stupid idea
- ruth begins her speech and kathy try’s to stop her (showing that she has thought the same thing and knows exactly what she’s going to say)
- ruth has a big speech about how they’re all made from ‘trash’, prostitutes, junkies, winos and tramps (outcasts of society) and of course she couldn’t have been cloned from the office women because she’s too good for it
- this is the first time we hear the word clone
- rodney and chrissie try to comfort ruth by saying to go visit their friend martin who’s how a carers
- seeing carers is against the rules and kathy doesn’t want to go, ruth degrades her for this but leaves
- tommy stays with kathy (‘if we’re splitting up then i’ll stay with kathy’)
15
Q
chapter 15
A
- after the other 3 leave, tommy tells kathy how he never cared much about the possible idea and he figured it doesn’t matter who they’re modelled from
- he tells her how he was looking for a present for her in woolworths, and he says how he was trying to find the tape she lost at hailsham but says he couldn’t because he didn’t know the title
- it was by judy bridgewater: songs after dark
- they decide to look around (as norfolk is the lost corner) and they take a while to find it
- they enjoy each others company and have a great day, very much in love
- they find it in a second hand shop, kathy finds it first and is reluctant to tell tommy as it means their hour has come to an end
- tommy is annoyed he didn’t find it first as says he tried really hard to at hailsham and imagined what her face would be like if he finally did
- tommy tells ruth about a theory he has about hailsham: he fears that the gallery is a way of giving evidence for the deferrals, as miss emily said to a student once that it reveals their souls and so it shows if the couple are worthy of a deferral
- he implies how he’s scared he won’t be able to do it for them, as he never did any art or got any into the gallery
- tommy tells her how he’s been working on some art which he hasn’t told anyone else about, a series of small animals - almost mechanical features which he hopes is creative - he finds artistic inspiration from things that are broken
- kathy says to tommy how the idea is interesting
- tommy also tells her how he realised why she was looking through the porn magazines as she was looking for her own possible
- kathy explains how her strong sexual urges made her think she came from a sex worker or pornographic actress
- tommy says how that’s a silly idea and if it were true it doesn’t matter as it doesn’t detract from kathy’s personality
- the rest of the group come back, happy from their time with martin and on the way back ruth makes a special effort to include kathy and tommy in the convo
- kathy doesn’t tell the rest of the people about the tape as she doesn’t want to spoil the moment of happiness
