Never Let Me Go Quotes
Never Let Me Go Essay
To what extent is Kathy’s and Ruth’s friendship real?
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 …show more content…
all the organs they possibly can the donors complete their purpose in life. In this essay I will particularly concentrate on Kathy’s and Ruth’s friendship, analyzing its development during the three parts of the book, and in the end concluding it by answering the final question based on my analysis.
The first introduction we get of their relationship is when Kathy says in the first part of the novel “all our differences-while they didn’t exactly vanish-seemed not nearly as important as all the other things”, we can directly understand from the first part of the quote that their relationship throughout the book will have ups and downs, I think the author decided to introduce us to their relationship in this way to warn us that their friendship will be rocky.
During the book although sometimes Kathy and Ruth might seem real friends, there is always some kind of tension between them, this is shown in this quote, when she says ‘they didn’t exactly vanish’, I think that the author wrote this part of the quote to show us the state of pressure in which their friendship is always put in, as if it was always going to explode. On the other hand in the second part of the quote, ‘all the other things’ that Kathy was talking about, are all the nice memories that they have shared together during their lives. I think that Kathy describes these memories as ‘important’, to make the readers understand that Ruth as a friend wasn’t so influential on her, but the most memorable fact that Kathy considers ‘important’ are the memories that they share of their childhood, that as we see Kathy is so attached
to.
During the years Kathy passed in Heilsham there were quite a few episodes of friendship and of arguments with Ruth, but Kathy states: “that was just to do with me and Ruth, and the sort of loyalty she inspired in me those days”. This quote clearly states that their friendship is loyal, because both of the two characters help each other when they are in difficult situations, but Kathy doesn’t give us the certainty of this loyal friendship because she places the word ‘sort’ in front of it, that emphasizes that their relationship is not always calm. The author decided to do this, because he wants to make the reader feel the tension between these two characters that is persistent throughout the book.
The main problem that Kathy’s and Ruth’s relationship has is their inability to communicate, and therefore solve their problems. I can understand this because Kathy narrates: “I’d not been able to talk openly to Ruth…But it was obvious from her manners…how pleased she was with me”, this quote shows us the unusual way in which Ruth and Kathy communicate, from their ‘manners’. But, by placing this cite, the author made the reader recognize that, at the same time these two character have some kind of connection, that allows their friendship to evolve during the book. In the last part of the book, we can even find a similar situation, when the author writes: “even though she wasn’t able to speak, I knew exactly what it was she wanted to say to me”. This quote emphasizes the connection between Kathy and Ruth, and makes the reader understand that they have this type of relation from the start of the book to the end of it, but this isn’t always positive, because their inability to communicate normally will cause some serious problems to get even worst.
I think that these two characters have this type of relationship, because of Kathy’s empathy, that shows us she is better at transmitting feeling throughout gestures, than talking, this is because of her passive personality in which she thinks that by talking she might influence a person too much, or make her get a wrong idea of what she says, but instead by transmitting signals that person understand what she if feeling without misunderstandings. On the other side I think that Ruth has even a part on this unusual relationship, because she is described as having an excellent social intelligence, that as we see in some situations: “Ruth came up with another theory. ‘She’s scared of us,’ she declared”, like in the one, that shows that Ruth was the only kid to perceive the ‘theory’ that Madame, the owner of the art gallery, is scared of the students in Heilsham. The good way in which Kathy transmits her feeling and the ability of Ruth to receive them and understand them make these two characters have this strange way of communicating.
During “The Cottages” the friendship of Ruth and Kathy experiences a lot of peaks and valleys, this is shown in the second part of the book when Kathy states: “We were quarrelling over all kinds of little things, but at the same time we were confiding in each other more than ever”. The author decided to place this quote at the start of the second part of the book to introduce and prepare us to the unstable relationship of these two characters. The choice of the word ‘quarrel’ really emphasizes, because of its onomatopoetic sound, the arguments that Kathy and Ruth will have, because the purpose of these fights is not really to prove a point, but, instead its because of the stress of the change of a new environment for the characters, that are starting to discover a whole new world. In the second part of the quote Kathy explains ‘we were confiding in each other more than ever’, in this statement it might seem that Kathy is telling us that in this period she was friend with Ruth, but what the author really wants to make us understand is that these two characters were so close because they needed someone they could relate and count on, to compare and talk about the problems they were facing. This is why I think that during this period there relationship wasn’t real, but just necessary, because there wasn’t anyone else that they could talk to that had the same background as them.
On the other hand Kathy’s relationship with Ruth, during the last part of the novel, seems to have suffered a strong evolution, we can tell this by the way Kathy describes Ruth when she interrupts her during a long story: “She didn’t particularly seem upset, but the smile had gone and her eyes looked far away, fixed somewhere on the sky ahead of us”. I can tell that Kathy expected a different, because she says ‘she didn’t particularly seem upset’, that implies she was expecting Ruth to at least say something back to her, but instead she only stops talking and stares outside of the car. This shows a strong evolution in Ruth’s character, I think that this is, not only she has matured during theses years she had to spend alone suffering, but even because in some way she has kind of given-up on herself and her life, that’s why she starts caring more about the relationship she has with Kathy, that is the only thing she has left in life.
After having analyzed the development and deepened on certain scenes of Kathy’s and Ruth’s relationship in Never Let Me Go, I can arrive to the conclusion, that these two character are not real friend, but the situations in which they are put through the book, in some way forces them to stick together and give the illusion of real friendship.
To what extent is Kathy’s and Ruth’s friendship real?
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 …show more content…
all the organs they possibly can the donors complete their purpose in life. In this essay I will particularly concentrate on Kathy’s and Ruth’s friendship, analyzing its development during the three parts of the book, and in the end concluding it by answering the final question based on my analysis.
The first introduction we get of their relationship is when Kathy says in the first part of the novel “all our differences-while they didn’t exactly vanish-seemed not nearly as important as all the other things”, we can directly understand from the first part of the quote that their relationship throughout the book will have ups and downs, I think the author decided to introduce us to their relationship in this way to warn us that their friendship will be rocky.
During the book although sometimes Kathy and Ruth might seem real friends, there is always some kind of tension between them, this is shown in this quote, when she says ‘they didn’t exactly vanish’, I think that the author wrote this part of the quote to show us the state of pressure in which their friendship is always put in, as if it was always going to explode. On the other hand in the second part of the quote, ‘all the other things’ that Kathy was talking about, are all the nice memories that they have shared together during their lives. I think that Kathy describes these memories as ‘important’, to make the readers understand that Ruth as a friend wasn’t so influential on her, but the most memorable fact that Kathy considers ‘important’ are the memories that they share of their childhood, that as we see Kathy is so attached
to.
During the years Kathy passed in Heilsham there were quite a few episodes of friendship and of arguments with Ruth, but Kathy states: “that was just to do with me and Ruth, and the sort of loyalty she inspired in me those days”. This quote clearly states that their friendship is loyal, because both of the two characters help each other when they are in difficult situations, but Kathy doesn’t give us the certainty of this loyal friendship because she places the word ‘sort’ in front of it, that emphasizes that their relationship is not always calm. The author decided to do this, because he wants to make the reader feel the tension between these two characters that is persistent throughout the book.
The main problem that Kathy’s and Ruth’s relationship has is their inability to communicate, and therefore solve their problems. I can understand this because Kathy narrates: “I’d not been able to talk openly to Ruth…But it was obvious from her manners…how pleased she was with me”, this quote shows us the unusual way in which Ruth and Kathy communicate, from their ‘manners’. But, by placing this cite, the author made the reader recognize that, at the same time these two character have some kind of connection, that allows their friendship to evolve during the book. In the last part of the book, we can even find a similar situation, when the author writes: “even though she wasn’t able to speak, I knew exactly what it was she wanted to say to me”. This quote emphasizes the connection between Kathy and Ruth, and makes the reader understand that they have this type of relation from the start of the book to the end of it, but this isn’t always positive, because their inability to communicate normally will cause some serious problems to get even worst.
I think that these two characters have this type of relationship, because of Kathy’s empathy, that shows us she is better at transmitting feeling throughout gestures, than talking, this is because of her passive personality in which she thinks that by talking she might influence a person too much, or make her get a wrong idea of what she says, but instead by transmitting signals that person understand what she if feeling without misunderstandings. On the other side I think that Ruth has even a part on this unusual relationship, because she is described as having an excellent social intelligence, that as we see in some situations: “Ruth came up with another theory. ‘She’s scared of us,’ she declared”, like in the one, that shows that Ruth was the only kid to perceive the ‘theory’ that Madame, the owner of the art gallery, is scared of the students in Heilsham. The good way in which Kathy transmits her feeling and the ability of Ruth to receive them and understand them make these two characters have this strange way of communicating.
During “The Cottages” the friendship of Ruth and Kathy experiences a lot of peaks and valleys, this is shown in the second part of the book when Kathy states: “We were quarrelling over all kinds of little things, but at the same time we were confiding in each other more than ever”. The author decided to place this quote at the start of the second part of the book to introduce and prepare us to the unstable relationship of these two characters. The choice of the word ‘quarrel’ really emphasizes, because of its onomatopoetic sound, the arguments that Kathy and Ruth will have, because the purpose of these fights is not really to prove a point, but, instead its because of the stress of the change of a new environment for the characters, that are starting to discover a whole new world. In the second part of the quote Kathy explains ‘we were confiding in each other more than ever’, in this statement it might seem that Kathy is telling us that in this period she was friend with Ruth, but what the author really wants to make us understand is that these two characters were so close because they needed someone they could relate and count on, to compare and talk about the problems they were facing. This is why I think that during this period there relationship wasn’t real, but just necessary, because there wasn’t anyone else that they could talk to that had the same background as them.
On the other hand Kathy’s relationship with Ruth, during the last part of the novel, seems to have suffered a strong evolution, we can tell this by the way Kathy describes Ruth when she interrupts her during a long story: “She didn’t particularly seem upset, but the smile had gone and her eyes looked far away, fixed somewhere on the sky ahead of us”. I can tell that Kathy expected a different, because she says ‘she didn’t particularly seem upset’, that implies she was expecting Ruth to at least say something back to her, but instead she only stops talking and stares outside of the car. This shows a strong evolution in Ruth’s character, I think that this is, not only she has matured during theses years she had to spend alone suffering, but even because in some way she has kind of given-up on herself and her life, that’s why she starts caring more about the relationship she has with Kathy, that is the only thing she has left in life.
After having analyzed the development and deepened on certain scenes of Kathy’s and Ruth’s relationship in Never Let Me Go, I can arrive to the conclusion, that these two character are not real friend, but the situations in which they are put through the book, in some way forces them to stick together and give the illusion of real friendship.