Is Kathy an Unreliable Narrator? – A Postmodern Reading of Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go

Abstract

In this paper, there is a critical analysis of how characters shape their subjectivity and lead their lives like they are in a perennial sentence. This paper brings an understanding of the dystopian element in the novel and why Never Let me Go is considered to be dystopian. This paper also speaks about Freewill vs Determinism where characters in the novel are determined to undergo a consciousness of long-suffering and how the lack of freedom stops the sense of yearning for the future. This paper talks about the human aspects and biological aspects of life. This paper also researches on bioethics of cloning since it happens in Ishiguro's novel Never Let me Go from the perspective of other famous ethical theories like natural law theory, Kantian ethical theory of categorical imperative. In the light of all the moral theories,cloning for biomedical research as summarized in the 2002 President's Council of USA on Bioethics, it was said that the Human Cloning and Human Dignity is permissible, while the cloning-based contributions and experiments that affect adversely the lives of human beings is morally impermissible.The human aspect is forgotten and the present world is slowly drawing towards biological aspects of life where the transplant industry is growing rapidly. The emotional connection to humanness is missing entirely. The paper also analyses the aspect of commoditization of characters in which each character is treated as a commodity to be used for in the future. A human being is like a living dead. The paper establishes a connection to how Kazuo Ishiguro analyzes the whole world in terms of capitalism where materialistic perspectives are given priority and emotional aspects are bereft by creating the dystopian characters of Ruth, Kathy, and Tommy in the novel Never Let Me Go. The paper finally compares various influences of prominent philosophers to Ishiguro to bring out the novel Never Let Me Go.