Into the Woods: Secrecy and Loss in Never Let Me Go Anonymous College

Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel Never Let Me Go is developed slowly, following its characters as they unassumingly and quietly move through a dystopian landscape towards their deaths. The nature of this dystopian world unfolds piecemeal through Kathy’s narrations of the past and the present, and is characterized by a sense of inevitability which pervades the entire novel. While Kathy’s experiences as an adult offer an abundance of direct information about her reality, I argue that the depictions of her childhood at Hailsham are also essential in discussing the themes of loss and the consequences of blind adherence to authority. Kathy’s childhood is marked heavily by the secreting of knowledge, which means that information about the reality of her position is revealed in moments of lack–moments where secrecy leads to gaps in information and through which an indirect awareness slips into the space of Hailsham. Specifically, I will focus on the information which is revealed through the childrens’ interactions with the woods surrounding Hailsham. The fear-filled depiction of the students’ attitudes towards the woods establishes this space as a boundary between Hailsham and the outside world through which information about their futures...