Never Let Me Go quotes Flashcards
Kathy’s success with donors quote (detached tone, euphemisms, themes)
“My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. Their recovery times have been impressive, and hardly any of them have been classified as “agitated,” even before fourth donation.”
Kathy singing and holding baby (symbolism, foreshadowing)
“it was one of those times I’d grabbed a pillow to stand in for the baby, and I was doing this slow dance, my eyes closed, singing along softly… and I opened my eyes to find myself staring at Madame…and the odd thing was she was crying.”
Norfolk lost corner quote (hope)
“when we lost something precious…we didn’t have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day…we could always go and find it again in Norfolk.”
Miss Lucy revealing their futures (conformity and rebellion, what does it mean to lead a good life?)
“You’ll be leaving Hailsham before long, and it’s not so far off, the day you’ll be preparing for your first donations…If you’re to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you.”
Kathy and Tommy at the shop in Norfolk (symbolism)
“We were right at the back of the shop, on a raised platform where it was darker and more secluded, like the old guy didn’t want to think about the stuff in our area and had mentally curtained it off.”
Tommy’s breakdown after visiting madame
“I could make out…Tommy’s figure, raging, shouting, flinging his fists and kicking out.
I tried to run to him, but the mud sucked my feet down. The mud was impeding him too, because one time, when he kicked out, he slipped and fell out of view into the blackness.”
Madame’s reaction to the children
“And I can still see it now, the shudder she seemed to be suppressing…Ruth had been right: Madame was afraid of us.”
End scene - tommy fantasy
“I started to imagine this little fantasy thing, because this was Norfolk after all…[that] a tiny figure would gradually get larger until I’d see it was Tommy…The fantasy never got beyond that—I didn’t let it—and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn’t sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.”
Kathy and Tommy’s relationship
“And so we stood together like that… just holding each other, while the wind kept blowing and blowing at us… and for a moment, it seemed like we were holding onto each other because that was the only way to stop us being swept away into the night.”
Boat quote
“And beyond the dead trunks…was the boat, sitting beached in the marshes under the weak sun.”
- the boat represents the clones, they are abandoned and forgotten by society
Leaving hailsham (Kathy speaking)
“Soon we’ll be leaving Hailsham. It’s not a game anymore.”
- links with the idea that hailsham is a facade and the fakeness of their childhood
Quote about the sales
“…usually the Sales were a big disappointment…we’d spend our tokens just renewing stuff that was wearing out or broken with more of the same.”
- the lost bric-a-brac at the sales could represent the clones
- replacing stuff that is wearing out or broken is what the clones are used for in the donations system
Direct address/second person
“I don’t know how it was where you were, but at Hailsham we had to have some form of medical almost every week”
Warning quote
“When the great breakthroughs in science followed one after the other so rapidly there wasn’t time to… ask the sensible questions”
“By the time they came to consider just how you were reared… well by then it was too late. There was no way to reverse the process. How can you ask a word that has come to regard cancer as curable, how can you ask such a world to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days?”
Pawns quotes
“I can see,” Miss Emily said, “that it might look as though you were simply pawns in a game…but think of it. You were lucky pawns…”
“It might be just some trend that came and went,” I said, “But for us, it’s our life.”
