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Kendall Busse
Professor Hannah Jorgenson
English 114B Spring
1 April, 2014
Project Space: Modern Day Segregation vs. Never Let Me Go
In the book Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, we are brought back in time through a
woman, named Kathys, life. This book is a collection of flashbacks throughout her childhood,
which was spent at a school called Hailsham. The children who go to Hailsham are not normal
children. These children are not considered human due to the fact that they are unable to
reproduce and that, later on in their lives, they will be donating their organs. Due to the fact that
they can not reproduce, there is a underlying question that seems to pop up in some peoples
minds. The question that arose in my mind is by separating these children from other children,
are we in-fact dehumanizing them? Are we considering them as anything less than human? In
todays society, we are segregating children and adults with disabilities from everyone else. We
have them attend separate schools, doctors, and, as children, some of them even attended
different day cares. We also have the issue of cloning to consider; not of humans yet, but of
animals. Once we are able to clone humans, will we consider these replicas humans, or will we
consider them something less? So are we in fact dehumanizing people with disabilities by
keeping their lives separate from ours? In the book Never Let Me Go are those children also
being dehumanized?
When first reading Never Let Me Go, Hailsham sounds like a wonderful place to grow
up. During Kathys first flashback of her childhood, she is driving along the country side and
pulls over to finish thinking about the times spent at Hailsham. She remembers her best friends
Tommy and Ruth. While Attending this school, Kathy learned a lot about the arts. Hailsham was
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a very big supporter of the arts. The guardians, or teachers as they were called, would have sales
of all of their work so that they could buy other students work and sell their own. If a person
actually went to Hailsham they would know the truth. Inside Hailsham, students were made fun
of for being different. One of Kathys friends, Tommy, was always at the wrong end of the jokes.
On page fifteen of Never Let Me Go, Kathy says Then there were rumors almost every day of
pranks that had been played on him. ... I thought sooner or later someone would start saying it
had gone too far, but it just kept on, and no one said anything.. This was said because Tommy
was not a very creative boy and never produced anything to put into the exchanges or the
Gallery. Due to his lack of creativity, Tommy would break out into temper tantrums and cause
attention to be brought his direction. Unfortunately, the attention that was brought to him was
negative, which is what caused all of the teasing. In the New York Times article Behind Every
Harassed Child? A Whole Lot of Clueless Adults, talks about a boy named Alex who lives in
Iowa. This boy was being harassed by his fellow classmates. They stabbed him with pencils,
called him names, and assaulted him daily. This kind of mistreatment causes people to become
isolated from the rest of society. The article continues to tell us that he sticks up for his bullies
because they are the only friends he has. It is heart breaking to have to hear about a boy who
considers cruel boys his friends.
There is also another article NJ Should End Its Segregation of Special Needs by Laura
Walters. The article talks about how the public school system is unlawfully segregating its
students who have special needs. The children who have disabilities are not allowed to
participate in traditional schooling with the other children due to their disabilities. These children
are taught in classrooms away from their peers and are not allowed to participate in recess or
lunch with the other normal students. New Jersey labels seventeen percent of its students
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disabled. According to this article, that is the fifth worse in the nation. The national average is
about thirteen percent. New Jersey is about five percent above the national average, which is
outrageously high. This article proves that not just children with disabilities are disabled, but also
children of color. "While comprising 17.7 percent of the total public school enrollment in 2004,
African-American children accounted for 22 percent of the students classified for special
education services, and 32.8 percent of the students in segregated placements.. These numbers
are truly startling and should not be accepted by any form of legislation. One reason for the
segregation in New Jersey is the lack of resources. New Jersey is such a small state with only a
limited amount of resources. It is a thriving industry in need of more help and motivation into the
correct direction.
In this story, we have a very interesting question that, we ourselves, have to answer. We
have to decided if we consider the children from Hailsham to be human or not. We must take
into consideration that these students will never be able to produce children of their own and that
they were made from science. They were not made the same way that we were. They are a exact
replica of a human. These children are exact replicas of other humans. In Never Let Me Go, Ruth
says, Were modeled from trash. Junkies, prostitutes, winos, tramps. Convicts, maybe, just so
long as they arent psychos. Thats what we come from. We all know it, so why dont we say
it?. She says this because she is worried about finding out information about her passed. She is
scared to find out where she came from, and who she was replicated from. She likes the feeling
of not knowing because, in my opinion, it makes it easier to pretend that she could come from
anyone she wanted. This is a very relevant topic to society today. People have been cloning
animals for some time now, and it is only a matter of time before the first human is cloned.
According to the National Confederation State Legislation, NCLS, fifteen states have laws that
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refer to cloning. The topic of cloning first arose in 1997 by California State Legislation. There is
now a ban on reproductive cloning or cloning to launch a pregnancy. Some states have different
laws pertaining to cloning. Some states allow stem cell research, some states allow public
funding for cloning, and some states to prohibit reproductive cloning. Virgin is considering
opening up to the idea of human cloning. That is still under interpretation.
In this book, we see that many of the characters have a since of hopelessness in their
actions. It seems, as though, they feel like they can do nothing to change the density that was,
unfortunately, placed in front of them. Ruth begins to question why she ever did any of the work
and went along with all of the tedious tasks that Hailsham made her do. She questions the
exchanges, the readings, the art work, and everything else that they did there. Kathy thinks that
these things help prepared them for their death by giving them memories to look back on. Ruth
says, Why did we do all of that work in the first place? Why train us, encourage us, make us
produce all of that? If were just going to give donations anyway, then die, why all those
lessons? Why all those books and discussions?. Here we can really see the hopeless in her
actions. Ruth also starts to get angry here. She starts to wonder why they would make her do all
of these tedious assignments when they were just going to take all of her elements from her.
They will eventually take everything she needs to live. Why teach someone when one is
eventually going to die before their time. In the movie My Sisters Keeper, Anna Fitzgerald
was born to help her older sister who has cancer. She was cloned so that she could give her
sister all of her organs. This follows the story line of Never Let Me Go very well. The only thing
that really changes is that, in the end of the movie, Anna eventually goes to a lawyer to fight for
the rights to her body. She wants to be able to have a say on what she gives away, meaning her
organs. The main point that she makes throughout the movie is that she does not want to be
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careful. By being careful, she means that she does not want to live each day thinking what
if. She wants the chance to be a care-free child and not have to worry about complications
during a surgery, painful bone marrow donations, organ transplants, and other horrible things
that come with donations. She wants the chance to be able to keep what is hers. In this case, she
wants the chance to be able to keep her body and not be forced to give up everything that she is.
That is the whole reason for the contract she seeks for in this movie. She wants the ability to be
able to own her body and everything that comes with having one.
Hailsham is a place of empty promises. It is a place of no future for young children who
are forced to donate their organs. The children here are dehumanized, discriminated, and given a
life of hopelessness. They are forced to accept the fact that they will never be able to do all the
things that they dream about and all of the things that they could have been. This is not morally
correct in any way possible. Hailsham is a place where children are forced to realize that they are
going to die at a young age. While they are here, they are forced to realize that they will never be
astronauts, doctors, actresses, singers, millionaires, or anything else for that matter. They will
spend most of their adult life in doctors offices and recovery rooms. Their views will be mostly
of the completely white tilted walls of their recovery rooms. Even though they are made
differently, are different, or be different, they still feel things just as we do. They deserve the
same respect that we give to each other. We should not punish someone for being different than
we are.




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Work Cited
"Behind Every Harassed Child? A Whole Lot of Clueless Adults." The New York Times. The
New York Times, 29 Mar. 2012. Web. 03 Apr. 2014
"Human Cloning Laws." Human Cloning Laws. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Print.
"N.J. Should End Its Segregation of Special Needs Students." - NewsWorks. N.p., n.d. Web. 03
Apr. 2014.
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Swarns, Rachel L. "After Decades in Institutions, a Bumpy Journey to a New Life." The New
York Times. The New York Times, 29 Sept. 2012. Web. 03 Apr. 2014.