Preview

Never Let Me Go

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
525 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Never Let Me Go
Never Let Me Go

2009: A symbol is an object, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of associations beyond itself. In literary works a symbol can express an idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning. Select a novel or play and, focusing on one symbol, write an essay analyzing how that symbol functions in the work and what it reveals about the characters or themes of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

Most children grow up thinking that one day they will reach maturity and go to college, get a job, start a life and family and so on. However, the children of Hailsham grow up only to get their organs taken from them one by one until they die. While growing up at Hailsham, their biggest fear seems to be the woods that surround their home. The woods are a symbol that represent the outside world and therefore their fate after Hailsham, but more importantly how this knowledge they have about their future is always wandering in the back of their mind.

Throughout the entire description of the woods, there’s imagery of things lurking over Hailsham. The woods are always “looming in the distance” up on the hill over Hailsham and the ghost of the girl who was never able to get back in is always “gazing over Hailsham” This idea of the woods being so scary, and the scary stories that have been created about them, is symbolic of how the fate of their futures also lingers over Hailsham and the children. It seems that the only thing the children can truly be sure of is that they will be fine as long as they stay in Hailsham. To them Hailsham represents security and safety, but outside, they don’t really know for sure. All they really know is that once they leave Hailsham, no matter how badly they’re pleading to be let back in, they will never be able to return. In the novel there is a part where the kids punish Marge K for embarrassing them by forcing her to look at the woods at night because apparently

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Symbols are small elements that formulate the themes of the books. Authors used them to disguise the themes otherwise, the story may loose it's drill. Also symbols allow the reader to interpret the ideas based on their perspective. In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury explains the idea of knowledge and ignorance through a set of symbolic…

    • 55 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Symbolism is the use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities by giving them symbolic meanings that are different from their literal sense. Symbols are used throughout literature to further explain a major theme. For instance, Ernest Hemingway uses many symbols in “Hills Like White Elephants”. In Hemingway’s short story, the main characters are a man referred to as “the American,” and a women referred to as just “the girl” and sometimes the nickname jig, both the American and the girl are discussing something important but as the readers we do not know exactly what the two characters are communicating about. The symbols used in the short story, such as the landscape, white elephants, the train, and the beaded curtain, gives the readers an…

    • 156 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The setting of the forest is a microcosm for the world where there are extremes of good and evil particularly at the time in which the novel is set. In chapter 1 of the novel the scene is set on a very idyllic estate,…

    • 1138 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A symbol is a thing, person, or place that is presented as a representation of a larger mean. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, as the story unravels, the objects which the boys encounter are decoded to provide a deeper meaning. Golding uses symbolism to expose that an item is more powerful than it first seems.…

    • 837 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Johnny Got His Gun

    • 622 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Constructing this story first with the campfire is the cliché atmosphere for the bonding of man and his offspring. Significantly, the selective detail of the pine falling from the tree foreshadows the similar genealogical-biological proverb, “the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree”. Building on this mutuality, the audience can infer the strain that will soon occur between the father and the son. Nature alludes to the genealogy between man and father. When the narrator expresses, “when you slept inside the tent it seemed always that it was raining outside because the needles from the pine kept falling…,” one can conclude the agony that will soon come from the one who inflicts this pain. Conclusively, the imagery reflects a correlation, but a sense of authority and…

    • 622 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    life to the story. The literary definition of symbol is: An object, person, or action that conveys…

    • 973 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    2009. A symbol is an object, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of associations beyond itself. In literary works a symbol can express an idea, clarify meaning, or…

    • 690 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Although Frost describes a place in the woods the reader gets the feeling that this just a symbolic setting. And that the actual setting is that of everyday choices that need to be made. Some of which will be uninformed and that the reader has to do what they believe is right or best for them.…

    • 794 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    this shows that even in good times, the brightness representing happiness, the bad side is still dark. Often times mood is represented with color and shades. Happiness is a bright sunny color. Unhappiness is dark and gloomy. The forest is always dark and gloomy never bright and sunny. that connection shows that with dark colors the forest is unhappy. not as in the trees and plants are sad but thats theres a dark unhappy feeling in the forest. since the setting if the forest is unhappy it can represent the bad part of life. Another point that makes the forest a bad part of life is that it's the opposite side of the good land(291). the good land is the good side of life and the opposite side is the bad side, that being the forest. the dark side is where the treasure was buried opposite of the good side making the forest the bad. the deals made in the forest(296). tom makes his deal in the bad part of life. the bad part being the forest. kidd buried his treasure in the forest, the deal of the devil keeping over it was there as well making the forest a dark time is people's…

    • 870 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Never Let Me Go

    • 1381 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In the video “The Empathic Civilisation”, Jeremy Rifkin shows that no one is an “other” since people can empathize with everyone else. Therefore every kind of illusory differences that exists between people disappears since empathy provides a feeling that everyone is related (1) . However, Kazuo Ishiguro‘s “Never Let Me Go” explores the theme of otherness, even though empathy is one of the dominant feelings throughout the story. The clones, who are an oppressed group used as organ donors, experience the feeling of “otherness”when they are in relation with the “normal” people. Indeed, the clones feel alienated from each other even though they were created for the same use. For instance, Kathy is the most empathetic character who she feels like the “odd one out”, which accounts for both her similarities and differences between her friends, Tommy and Ruth. Through an analysis of Madame’s reaction, as well as Kathy‘s sexual life and job as a career, it will be clear that Kathy makes herself as an “other” during the whole story [rephrase]. (She accepts the reality)…

    • 1381 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Never Let Me Go Quotes

    • 1376 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Never let me go is a dystopian novel written by Kazuo Ishiguro, published in 2005. The book is divided in three sections: the childhood, were Kathy the main character describes her life with her other two best friends, Ruth and Tommy in a very special school called Heilsham, part two, in which the three characters are already adults, therefore they move to a residential complexion called “The Cottages” and they start discovering how normal people live, but especially their sexualities and how relationships work, instead in the last part concentrates on Kathy being a career and Ruth and Tommy being donors, this last section is called “completing”, because by donating…

    • 1376 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Never Let Me Go: Analysis

    • 730 Words
    • 3 Pages

    It is impossible to talk about the novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro in a straightforward manner. This novel though cryptic and rather dark is full of hidden meanings and powerful messages. The novel is written in a slow paced, carefully thought out manner that reveals a parallel world much like our own within the boundaries of modern England. The author, Mr. Kazuo Ishiguro has crept into the world of science fiction and horror to create a book revolving around memory and the daily human interactions that knag at one’s mind. Ishiguro has found a way to mix unpleasantness with euphemism and blissful ignorance. So it is perhaps appropriate to say that the book is memorable, and to not mention, specifically, why.…

    • 730 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Never Let Me Go: Overview

    • 722 Words
    • 3 Pages

    “That’s sad. How plastic and artificial life has become. It gets harder and harder to find something…real.” ― Jess C. Scott, The Other Side of Life This quotation is ironic to the plot presented in the novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. The basic idea of the quote is that the more material items you obtain or desire, the more "plastic" you become. Although the clones in this novel are technically artificial, they appear, act, and think as humans showing their "realness", despite the fact that they are being materially deprived. Throughout Ishiguro's images of material deprivation like: the "exciting" and "crowded" (42) Sales that sell seemingly useless items, the scenes of the desperate, run-down cottages, and the melancholic life of a carer, we see that Hailsham is only different in some aspects from other, similar facilities and not all. Hailsham only concentrates on the early years of a clone's life and stops its concern after the clones "complete" (5) their time there.…

    • 722 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Never Let Me Go

    • 1264 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Kazuo Ishiguro wrote an amazing novel called Never Let Me Go. As you read this book you will agree with me that it has great literary merit. It also has the full potential to become a classic and to be taught in schools. In reading this novel one may feel that the book addresses out current world. In our current world the scientific standings are changing, and so are the morals in the people. As you read the novel you will become familiar with the Hailsham school, which is the school where the children never leave. In this novel you will also start to see that this may come in to play in our world one day. These children are raised to be donors. They are never allowed to leave their school grounds, they don?t interact…

    • 1264 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Never let me go

    • 97207 Words
    • 389 Pages

    My name is Kathy H. I'm thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer now for…

    • 97207 Words
    • 389 Pages
    Good Essays