Option Two – General vision and viewpoint Mode: General vision and viewpoint


General vision and viewpoint in Never Let Me Go Opening


The general vision and viewpoint of this dystopian novel is not clearly established at the outset, but a series of puzzling references and events in the lead-up to a shocking and dreadful revelation make the reader increasingly uneasy.


Kathy’s narration opens on an upbeat note. She is pleased that she has been a ‘carer’ for so long and even though she says she is not trying to boast, she is clearly proud of her achievement: ‘I do know for a fact that they’ve been pleased with my work, and by and large, I have too’. Kathy’s unspecified employers want her to continue for another eight months, which means she will have been a carer for almost 12 years.


At first glance, this may seem to be a positive account of Kathy’s career, but on closer reading there are a few disturbing elements. For example, Kathy tells us she is 31 and nearing the end of her working life. This seems very odd, and the more we read, the more negative the general vision and viewpoint of the novel appears. Questions are raised but not fully answered, but what we learn is unnerving. Kathy says she takes care of ‘donors’ and is proud that they are calm and not agitated, ‘even before fourth donation’. We wonder what these people are donating and why. What is it that makes donors most agitated before ‘fourth donation’? Kathy says her donors tend to ‘do much better than expected’ and recover quickly. The word ‘donation’ implies a voluntary act, so why should donors be unwell and distressed?


The offhand way Kathy refers to ‘donors’ and ‘carers’ reinforces the unease that pervades the opening section of the novel. It is obvious that the world in which she lives has accepted this as a norm that needs no explanation. Early in the opening chapter, Kathy says that she understands why other carers ‘might get resentful’ of the fact that she has a bedsit, a car and some control over her working life. Few readers would feel envious of such a simple lifestyle, so Kathy’s mention of this suggests that most of her fellow carers live far worse lives. The author’s viewpoint is that the world of the text is harsh and there are few rewards for those who devote themselves to helping others.


Kathy feels she was lucky to grow up in Hailsham because she had an idyllic upbringing in what others view as one of the ‘privileged estates’. Her description of the place where she grew up highlights the unnatural and limited life she considered normal. When Kathy describes the benefits of her early years with ‘guardians’ rather than parents and an entire childhood lived in the house and gardens of a large estate, we see that she was only fortunate compared to the vast majority of donors and carers who reached adulthood in far less pleasant surroundings. When Kathy asks one of her donors ‘where he’d grown up’, he pales and grimaces at the memory. He desperately wants to avoid thinking about his childhood in that terrible place and prefers to lose himself in the relative happiness of Kathy’s accounts of Hailsham.


The donor Kathy helps through ‘the drugs and the pain and the exhaustion’ is comforted by her childhood memories and absorbs them until ‘the line would blur between what were my memories and what were his’. Kathy says that this was the first time she understood ‘how lucky’ she and her friends at Hailsham had been. This comparison leaves us feeling pessimistic about the story of Kathy’s life in Hailsham and afterwards.


Leaving Certificate English Excellence in Texts


419


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