Never Let Me Go Flashcards
The guardians… (forms of control)
“The guardians were really strict about smoking.”
But what… (forms of control)
“But what you must understand is that for you, it’s much, much worse to smoke than it ever was for me.” - Miss Lucy
Do you think… (persecution)
“Do you think she’d have talked to us like that if she’d known what we really were?” - Ruth
We’re all afraid… (persecution)
“We’re all afraid of you. I myself had to fight back my dread of you almost every day I was at Hailsham.” - Miss Emily
You look in… (persecution)
“You look in the gutter. You look in rubbish bins. Look down the toilet, that’s where you’ll find where we all came from.” - Ruth
She believed… (propaganda/withholding information)
“She believed you should be given as full a picture as possible.” - Miss Emily (about Miss Lucy)
The problem… (propaganda/withholding information)
“The problem, as I see it, is that you’ve been told and not told”. - Miss Lucy
When the guardians… (propaganda/withholding information)
“When the guardians were giving us those talks, nothing came as a complete surprise. It was like we’d heard everything somewhere before”.
A part… (surveillance)
“A part of us stayed like that: fearful of the world around us.” (in cottages)
And as soon… (surveillance)
“And as soon as you looked like you were trying to sneak off for a secret talk, the whole place seemed to sense it within minutes, and you’d have no chance.”
It should have… (love/hope/betrayal)
“It should have been you two. I’m not pretending I didn’t always see it. Of course I did, as far back as I can remember. But I kept you apart.” - Ruth
If you… (love/hope)
“If you were a boy and a girl, and you were in love with each other, really, properly in love, and you could show it, then the people who run Hailsham, they sorted it out for you.” - Chrissie
We’ve loved… (love/hope)
“We’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever.” - Tommy
It was possible… (memory)
“It was possible to forget for whole stretches of time who we really were.”
It was that exchange… (memory)
“It was that exchange, when we finally mentioned the closing of Hailsham, that suddenly brought us close again.” (Talking with Laura)
All separated… (memory)
“All separated now but still somehow linked by the place we’d come from”.
Ruth and I… (memory)
“Ruth and I often found ourselves remembering these things a few years ago, when I was caring for her down at the recovery centre.”
The memories… (memory)
“The memories I value most, I don’t see them ever fading. I lost Ruth, then I lost Tommy, but I won’t lose my memories of them.”
The line… (memory)
“The line would blur between what were my memories and what were his.”
Tommy thought… (withholding information)
“Tommy thought it possible the guardians had, throughout all our years at Hailsham, timed very carefully and deliberately everything they told us, so that we were always just too young to understand properly the latest piece of information.”
All around… (persecution)
“All around the country, at this very moment, there are students being reared in deplorable conditions, conditions you Hailsham students could hardly imagine.” - Miss Emily
Sleepless nights… (persecution)
“Sleepless nights, with the drugs and the pain and the exhaustion.”
Very well… (propaganda/withholding information)
“Very well, sometimes we meant to keep things from you, lied to you. Yes, in many ways we fooled you. I suppose you could even call it that. But we sheltered you during those years, and we gave you your childhoods.” - Miss Emily
There was something… (love/hope)
“There was something in Tommy’s manner that was tinged with sadness, that seemed to say: ‘Yes, we’re doing this now and I’m glad we’re doing it now. But what a pity we left it so late.”
