CBR-III #2: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go is not a novel with characters raging against a dystopian universe that treats them cruelly.  Instead it is a novel of three young people’s interactions and the way they deal with the fate that is chosen for them.  The main focus is the narrator; known only as Kathy H., and her interactions with her two friends, Ruth and Tommy.  It sketches a picture of the three from their time as children under the care of “guardians” through to their adulthood.  The novel, unlike Tommy’s excessively detailed drawings, provides only sketches of the unnatural trio and never a fully fleshed out vision of the three.  As children, and even as they reach adulthood, everything about the three is provided in glimpses.  They are never quite sure of their fate.  They know that they have shadowy donations looming in their future, but as a coping mechanism, they never fully discuss or attempt to comprehend the future that has been chosen for them.  Much of the time whenever the three, or any of their “classmates” are together they spend their time pretending the future is open to them in a normal fashion and avoid anything that might remind them of their limited existence. 

At Hailsham, under the care of their guardians, the trio has what appear to be normal school day interactions.  They experience the trials of bullying, love, insecurity and all the other normal situations and feelings that pre and post adolescents struggle with.  All throughout the school days though, there is an occasional pulling back of the curtain providing a brief glimpse of the future that awaits them all.  Every time, though, the curtain is quickly pushed back before there fates can be fully realized.  Kathy discusses the tensions she can feel amongst the guardians about how much to reveal to the students.  The students struggle with deciding how much of their future they want to discover.  The school collects their artwork for an unknown purpose.   The students consider it an honor, but are never quite sure why they consider it one. 

As they leave Hailsham and their future comes closer, they still refuse to discuss it with each other.  They move from Hailsham to an abandoned farm and try to continue life in the pattern of their school.  As time goes by and the older ex-students chose to begin their careers as carers and eventual donors, their fate becomes inescapable.  Their youthful dreams of office life and becoming like people in the outside fade away.  Their quiet acceptance of the future that someone else has chosen for them is the most disturbing part of the novel.  Except for one instance, there is almost no scene in the novel where any of the three main characters rails against their fate.  The only people shown fighting for the autonomy of the donors are the guardians who are never even quite sure that what they are fighting for is even a worthwhile fight.

CBR-III Review #1: A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Somehow, despite most people having read A Brave New World in high school, this book has passed me by.   Which is a little strange, considering how much I like a good dystopian novel; And this book is an extremely good dystopian novel.  It is equal parts predictive and disturbing.   Although humans (well, at least the Alphas of Huxley’s vision) may not be flying around in individualized helicopters anytime soon, it is easy to imagine a world in which most humans work in a mundane repetitive job during working hours and numb themselves after the working day is done.  In fact, even without a daily ration of Soma, that is practically speaking, what a significant portion of the population do on their own; through alcohol, drugs (either or both prescription and non-prescription) and television or some combination of all three.   And the thought of a genetically engineered caste system put in place to maintain social order isn't such a far-fetched view of the possible lengths a government may go to in order to ensure control.      

The most disturbing scenes to read in the novel were the ones where the Savage, John, has what equates to a series of nervous breakdowns as he tries to reconcile the ideals of human feelings and emotion, gleaned form Shakespeare no less, with what he sees in the “civilized” society.   As he progresses through the novel he has an ever greater difficultly reconciling his ideals with his new reality.  And as his illusions about the great society that his mother described to him are dissolved one by one and his ideals about himself and his own emotions are shattered, he reaches a breaking point.  And that is the most truly disturbing point the book has to make.  That possibly in the future, society will reach a point, where the population is too great and resources so few, that conforming without critical thinking will become a necessity in order to keep humanity as a whole intact.

Cannonball Read III

So, hopefully I'll read 52 books and be able to make myself write a brief review for each one.  I'm off to a slow start, so we'll see ... Book One Review to follow in a few minutes ...