Cardinale 1

Brooke Cardinale

Mrs. Winn

English 12, Per. 6

2 April 2021

Creative Title Here (Do not title Never Let Me Go Final!)

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s story, Never Let Me Go, the cloning of humans in order to harvest

organs and prolong healthy human lives is unethical for the future of humankind because it is

dehumanizing. Although one might argue that it is a necessary practice, the truth remains that

this is depriving them of living a fulfilled life. In this story, children are raised in a school in

Salem where they cannot leave. In reality they are there to be used for their organs when they are

older. The three friends Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy grow up to realize that their only purpose in

life is to donate. To start, these children are unaware of what they will do when they are older

and it is unfair for them to not be informed of this information. They have to keep an artwork

portfolio which has their artwork from over the years. They think they are just making art for the

fun of it but, in reality, they are making this artwork for the contribution of an experiment where

the school is testing to see if these children have real souls and have a larger purpose in life.

When the children are grown and informed on their “true purpose”, they hear a rumor from a

friend that if two people are truly in love and can prove it, based on their artwork from when they

were children, then they can delay their surgeries and donations so they can spend more time

with their loved one. They go out of their way to gather information to attempt to prove they are

in love so they can delay their surgeries. They meet up with people who could help them but are

informed it is just a rumor and there is nothing that they can do to delay these surgeries. Some

might instead believe that the cloning of humans in order to harvest organs and prolong healthy
 Cardinale 2

human lives is neccesary because they are helping others fufil their lives and are benefitting

others. While this may be a valid argument to some, the truth remains that this is unfair and cruel

because everyone deserves to live a full life and be happy and surrounded by loved ones but

these people are deprived of that. In fact, the school even told the children stories about other

children that escaped Hailsham, the school in Salem, and how they disappeared to scare the

children into never leaving. Hailsham hired a new teacher, Miss Lucy, she was younger and

cared about these children and knew that what the school was doing was wrong. She took

matters into her own hands and decided to tell one of her classes the truth on why they were

there trying to help them but the school found out and fired her. I believe all the teachers knew

deep down that the whole program was cruel but knew they were not in any harm, so they went

along with everything. They all were selfish and were not willing to help the children unlike

Miss Lucy so when they found out she was trying to help, they had to get rid of her. Hailsham

was an extremely selfish program with teachers who did not care about them being deprived of

living their own life and went along with the cruel actions. This is unfair to the children because

they would not tell the truth and instead just sat back to watch them slowly grow up just to live

for someone else. Therefore, anyone who truly cared for these children was unable to help. They

were never able to have a choice in their lives and were forced to grow up just to be cutshort of

living a fulfilled life.