Brooklyn directed by John Crowley Philadelphia, Here I Come! by Brian Friel
Mode: Theme or issue The theme of identity in Never Let Me Go
While most young people question their place in the world, Kathy and her friends have to wrestle with a unique problem in terms of their identity. She and all the other donors have been cloned in order to provide organs. Therefore, they must come to terms with the fact that ‘normal’ people believe the clones have no identity of their own. Kathy spends most of the book struggling with the confusion surrounding her sense of self. Is she merely a copy of the person from whom she was cloned or does she have the ability to be her own person?
From a young age, the students of Hailsham are raised to believe they are different, but they are not told exactly why. When Miss Lucy warns the children against smoking because they are ‘special’, they do not ask her to explain further. Looking back on that moment, Kathy thinks that it was because, even at the age of nine or ten, they knew enough to make them ‘wary of that whole territory’. The children realise they are not the same as their guardians or the ‘normal people outside’ but they are unwilling to face who – or what – they really are.
A key moment early in the novel forces the children to face an unpleasant truth about their identities. Kathy and her young school friends are intrigued by the regular visits of a woman known simply as
