Throughout history, human cloning and organ donation have
been two highly-debated topics. As scientific research has progressed, many
ethical issues have been raised against the use of human cloning. In Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro creates
characters and stories that show his own unique take on human cloning and organ
donation. In the novel, even though all of the major characters are clones,
they are still humane. All the characters undergo normal life events and have
to deal with common human problems revolving around love, loss, and friendship.
By showing that clones are extremely similar to humans, Ishiguro brings up an
important point that human cloning in inhumane and unjust.
Ishiguro believes that by creating clones, humans not only
take away a clones’ life but also prevent clones from living their lives. In
the novel, when the clones are teenagers, Miss Lucy hears two boys talking about
their dreams and aspirations. Immediately, Miss Lucy states, “None of you will
go to America, none of you will be film stars. And none of you will be working
in the supermarkets as I heard some of you planning the other day. Your lives
are set for you” (81). Miss Lucy immediately shuts any dreams that the students
have and emphasizes that the only thing students will do with their lives is
donate their organs. Through this scene, Ishiguro depicts how inhumane human
cloning is. Human cloning allows for humans to decide the fate of the clones. Hence,
the clones don’t have the freedom to live their life the way they choose
because their fate is already decided for them.
However, it is important to note that in the novel, the
clones want to donate their organs. Through brainwashing, the clones believe
that their destiny is to “complete” by donating their organs. Critics could
therefore argue that even if the clones had the freedom to choose what they
wanted to do with their lives, they would still end up donating their organs.
Though this is a valid point, humans are still the ones that actively try to
brainwash the clones in the first place. By doing so, clones no longer have the
freedom to decide their destiny.
In Never Let Me Go Ishiguro makes the clones into very human characters, most likely to highlight how unethical it is to raise clones to just have their organs harvested. However, the society Ishiguro depicts in the novel is too comfortable with their current mode of living, with clones providing cures for horrible diseases. People who are not clones are not willing to “go back to the dark days” before these cures just because of sympathy for clones (263). This seems strange, because, as Ally points out, the reader can clearly see that clones are human, that the clones are fully people. The society in the novel, however, is not like the reader. People in that society get to live longer because of the clones, so “...they tried to convince themselves you [clones] weren’t really like us” (263). Miss Emily and Madame used art from the clones, “...or students, as we preferred to call you…” to try to convince other people that the clones were human (261). They attempted “...to prove you had souls at all”, a fact that surprises Kathy (260). Like the reader, Kathy is well aware of the fact that clones are like people, although Kathy knows because she is a clone herself. The people who are not clones, however, convince themselves that the clones are not like people, so they can keep on living their deadly disease free lives, without worrying about the ethics of how they get their organs.
ReplyDeleteDonations is an inevitable fate for the clones, and I think the idea of deferrals is Ishiguro's point of how people hope for the better even when it may be futile. In the book, the students talk about deferring for three years, but at the end of the day, they still will have to donate. While it's unethical, the clones themselves don't view it as so because they don't know any better. They don't realize that Hailsham students had it good, as put by Miss Emily and Madame. They didn't understand that they were an experiment in a movement that failed to prove the ethics of a clone. Society's reaction to shutting out the conversation on the ethicality of clones is similar to how humans who know something is or should be immoral block out that negativity to prevent themselves from getting too involved.
ReplyDeleteHowever, even Kathy and her group didn't think about trying to escape the inevitable fate when they went to Norfolk. This shows how the clones are brainwashed to think and view donations as their purpose in life. They too fundamentally think it's futile, so it comes to no surprise that they all at some point or another will become donors.
While this book obviously raises the ethical issue of harvesting human clones for their organs, it also serves to bring real-world ethical issues to the forefront of the reader’s mind. As Ishiguro points out through Miss Emily’s reasoning behind why people are okay with harvesting clones, humans’ “overwhelming concern was that their own children, their spouses, their parents, their friends, did not die from cancer, motor neurone disease, heart disease” (203). No matter how uncomfortable it makes the humans in the book feel, they are still unwilling to try to stop the cloning that is helping them live longer. This same statement is true today—we cannot claim to be a more ethical form of humans than those in Never Let Me Go just because we don’t have clones. When Europeans first came to America and “founded” the United States, they essentially forced the natives who were already living in America to move to undesirable geographical locations without regard for the natives’ concerns. When considering U.S. history, many Americans ignore the “Trail of Tears” and the travesty of how new Americans treated the natives, because people want to ignore their own ethical issues. Humans tend to rationalize their own unethical behaviors to feel better about them, much like the people in this novel rationalize that the clones are not real people.
ReplyDeleteI really like Braden's comment comparing Ishiguro's fictional world to our own very real one. When discussing this story and the ethics behind the things that occur within it, it can be easy to forget just how similar it really is to our country, one who’s foundation, like Braden said, is based upon the misfortune of others. A point was made in class that perhaps this imagined situation is closer to becoming reality than we think. When it comes to our own well-being, or the well-being of those we love, humans can get quite selfish. As portrayed in the novel, people were very easily willing to sacrifice the lives of the clones in order to save themselves or a family member because they valued human lives over the inhuman ones. At the beginning of the development of clones and organ donation, “people preferred to believe these organs appeared from nowhere, or at most that they grew in a kind of vacuum” (262). Even though, deep down, people knew where the organs came from, they chose to ignore it in order to avoided feeling unethical or guilty about it. Just as how people know how the United States was founded, but they sometimes chose to ignore it for the same reason – to avoid guilt.
ReplyDelete