The Effects of Truths Told and Not Told in Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, there is extensive

metacommentary concerning the theme of what is told and not told. In the text, this idea is most clearly seen with the impending organ donations and the futures and future duties and obligations of the clones. Ishiguro uses this motif in his narration through how the readers learn about the world in the book.

Organ donations are the sole purpose of the clones, though they are unaware of this fact. However, to say that they are unaware is something of an exaggeration because they are “aware” of what lies in store for them from about the age of six or seven, but don’t truly understand what the donations really mean. This fact is only explained to them when they’re around fifteen, and not in a way that was planned; one of their guardians became frustrated with their forced ignorance when they were talking among themselves about their futures. She explained to them that “None of [them] will go to America, none of [them] will be film stars. And none of [them] will be working in supermarkets as I heard some of [them] planning the other day” (81). She prefaces this small outburst by noting that “The problem is, as I see it, is that [they’ve] been told and not told. [They’ve] been told, but none of [them] really understand,” despite having been told here and there about the donation process throughout their lives. An analogy that fits this scenario is adoption; many adoptees know from a very young age-some even from before they can remember the exact conversation-that they are adopted, but few understand what adoption means or entails until quite a bit later in

life, not until they are in the double-digits in age. This mirrors the clones’ knowledge of donations because they know of them but don’t understand what they really are. As well, Tommy notes “it’s possible the guardians managed to smuggle into [their] heads a lot of the basic facts about [the donations]” in the discussions during their sex education (83). This, again, follows with the theme of the “told and not told” because, technically speaking, they were told about the donations and that process, but they were intentionally distracted from it by the far more intriguing topic of sex. He also observes that the guardians “timed very carefully and deliberately everything they told [them], so that [they] were always too young to understand properly the latest piece of information” (82). Relating this back to the smuggling of information into their heads, Tommy realizes how the guardians have kept them in blissful ignorance, while still telling them critical information about their futures.

This theoretical future that the clones were envisioning was something else that was shrouded in fog during their childhood. Before the outburst by one of their guardians when they were fifteen-their response to which was “‘Well so what? We already knew all that””-their knowledge of what was to happen to them after Hailsham was unclear (82). When they moved up to the Cottages, they had their first taste of what the “real world” when they went into the city to investigate a possible for Ruth. Though few of them acknowledge the gravity of this excursion, it was a glimpse into what they will never have. They think that their future was “explained [to them,] how

before donations [they’d] all spend some time first as carers, about the usual sequence of the donations, the recovery centres, and so on” at a younger age, thus making such a trip into the “real world” less startling because they knew that they couldn’t have what everybody else did (82). This is especially interesting because the novel is narrated from the future by Kathy as a thirty-year-old carer, when she knows her future because it is drawing to a close, and she addresses the readers as though they are a part of her world and understand what she’s talking about. The place where this is most noticeable is during the first few pages when she is throwing around terms like “donations” and “carer” and expecting the readers to need no definition for them because the reader is a clone like herself.

The metacommentary of the “told and not told” lie in Kathy H’s narration. As was just noted, the first time this duality can be seen is in the first few pages. Kathy uses various terms that, to her, are completely commonplace in a way that implies that she expects the readers to understand them without any explanation. The readers are forced to infer their meaning for numerous pages before the textual clues finally line up and a definition can be found. The novel is thus narrated as though to a peer, to another clone. Not only is this clear through the random terms used, but also through how the characters are described. They aren’t. It takes until halfway through the book for the readers to learn a physical descriptor of the narrator, and even then it isn’t a particularly “important” one, like eye color; she reveals the length of her hair. This lack of description is critical because

it shows that Kathy anticipates that the readers are familiar to some extent with the characters that she’s talking about. The narration as a whole is also quite informal, letting the readers infer that the intended audience is a close friend, or at least someone with whom the narrator is relatively well acquainted. However, it can be assumed that Ishiguro had intentionally mirrored this uncertainty, and so he also knew that sometimes he would have to come out and explain the world in plainer terms. One such place is Miss Lucy’s monologue on page 81 after she is frustrated by how the children are planning their futures. Her frustration stems not from anger but from pain because she can’t stand to watch these students talk about the places they could go in life knowing that they’ll never make it there. Though it can be read quite cruelly, she was being kind; Tommy realizes this most clearly. However, none of the students get angry with her for stopping their imaginings because they were too uncomfortable with the subject of donations to think about it for too long. This discomfort, too, is mirrored in the readers. Ishiguro created a world that readers don’t totally want to understand due to its nature as a dystopian past, as somewhere that the world could potentially end up. As such, a part of the audience wants to be left blissfully ignorant because then there is no obligation to care about what will happen. The cloned children felt the same way about uncovering their futures. To combat this, any new information is often “padded” with distractions. Kathy notes that she “could see more drops coming off the gutter and landing on her shoulder, but she didn’t seem to notice” (81). This

is immediately followed by the first words of Miss Lucy’s explanation. This distraction is used by the guardians during the sex education talks at school, but it isn’t narrated as clearly as the above example.

Thus, readers learn about the world in Kazuo Ishiguro’s work Never Let Me Go and the characters that inhabit it in bits and spurts as a result of what they are and aren’t told. The mirroring of this motif in the content of the novel in the writing and narration of it shows how deep the hidden sides of the society in this alternate timeline run and how critical this idea of what can and can’t-or shouldn’t-be known is to those who live in it. It also serves to confuse the audience because the world is never made totally clear to them, just as the futures of the clones are left shrouded in fog and uncertainty. However, in both cases, a critical moment is reached in which the readers are getting clarity about the world at the same time as Kathy and her friends; the most notable instance of this is Miss Lucy’s speech on page 81. The readers are learning about what will happen to the characters as they age, and so are the students, though few of them take it as seriously as it ought to be taken and so fail to see the gravity of what she did for them.