Never Let Me Go: Uncertainty and Humanity

One of the things I noticed when reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go was that the voice of the narrator sounded so young. I am currently rereading the novel and the second time around I am paying a bit more attention to the narrative style. I haven’t made it far in, but I notice that the tone is almost conversational. It feels as if Kathy is trying to build up some sort of rapport with their readers, negotiating the story with us and with herself as she tells it. This tends to make her sound submissive, non-authoritative and unsure of her self. Kathy is telling the story from an adult perspective- in her 30s, in fact, and yet I couldn’t help but read her as a very naive, innocent person... the way she speaks is almost childlike. The novel is largely written with simple language, repetitive sentence construction, and often the speaker is not exactly eloquent. She is so uncertain about what she is saying, always second guessing and downplaying her own words even as she says them; from the start she is downplaying her role as a carer (page 3), as she relays the events throughout the first few chapters it is very self-reflective and she often edits herself; “Or maybe I’m remembering it wrong...” (7), the word maybe appears repeatedly when she tries to interpret past events (i.e. on page 17). Why did Ishiguro choose to make his speaker relate to us in this way?

Some possible explanations; she sounds young voiced because she is reliving events from her childhood, and putting herself back in that point of view. She is also coming to terms with her confusing past given that the end of her role as a carer is imminent. Perhaps she has found herself moving with such momentum through life that she has not yet had a chance to reflect, as was mentioned in class: she has been following her path without any significant resistance to it. The novel could be read as a form of resistance. Ishiguro wanted her to sound authentically, ordinarily, human. Most humans aren’t certain about things. Memories are typically fallible. If she was certain about everything, might we question her authority and humanity even more? Or maybe he wanted to emphasize the stunting effects of her life as a clone; she never had a chance to experience “real life”, and thus never accumulated the life experiences that might lead to a more mature perspective or the ability to express herself articulately. Perhaps Ishiguro plays up her child-like uncertainty and speaking style in order to make us view her more sympathetically.
The style calls attention to the humanity of the speaker. It also makes the novel’s characters seem more real, and the readers are able to witness the construction of the characters through the eyes of someone who “was there” and who is struggling to find a perspective on the events. The characters, in particular Kathy, are more “relatable”. If one of the aims or interests of the novel is in emphasizing the humanity of beings that are supposed to be so far removed from a regular human society, then the speaking choice makes sense.

Witnessing the reflection first hand also serves the purpose of delaying the revelation of the complete truth. It took me a bit longer than I like to admit to piece together the whole picture. Delaying the revelation of this speakers real purpose has the effect of delaying the readers judgement of her. If it was explicit from the beginning that she was in a community of people who were cloned for organ donation, this would alter the tone and understanding of the rest of the story. Instead Ishiguro gets his readers invested in the characters before revealing everything that happened.