Chapter 3 The Real World and the Way of Life We Choose ---- From the Novel to the Reality                                     14

       3.1 The World We Are in ---- The “New World” Alludes the Real World    14

       3.2 The Way of Life We Choose ---- Decently Seek Freedom in the Dark New World                                      15

Conclusion                                     18

Acknowledgements                                19

Bibliography                                   20

Introduction

As one of the most celebrated contemporary novelists of English-speaking world, Kazuo Ishiguro has received four Man Booker Prize nominations, and won the prize for his 1989 work The Remains of the Day. In 2005 Ishiguro’s new novel Never Let Me go was named by Time magazine the best fiction novel of 2005. The book illustrates the story about a special group of human---- the clones, whose organs are to be harvested at a certain time, but they have no rights to refuse this cruel exploitation. Although living in fear and anxiety, many of them, represented by the heroine and hero, Kathy and Tommy, have struggled to create their unique meaning of life, thus metaphorically displaying a picture of human-beings’ living status. This theme is of great significance to examine the mechanism of modern society, and to explain phenomenon and problems of human’s development. Through analyzing and comparing the “old world” and “new world”, this paper discusses human’s collective living condition, trying to explain human’s nature for freedom and the recognition of identity.论文网

After Never Let Me Go was published, critics consider this novel to be a success on the background of globalization, with many foreign and Chinese scholars showing great interest in the novel. Analysis from different perspectives can be seen in their studies. Titus Levy examines Never Let Me Go as a type of Bildungsroman that presents coded models of contemporary human rights issues, demonstrating how the text copes with the effects of storytelling on personal psychologies, both as a constructive response to atrocity and as a potentially dubious method of overcoming traumatic experience; Bruce Robbins discusses sudden, astonishing and inexplicable cruelty of characters to their intimacies in Never Let Me Go and other Ishiguro’s fictions; Keith McDonald discusses many techniques of autobiographical memoir in this novel, saying this novel has heightened sense of drama and emotion because it emphasizes the late twentieth century in England when children are cloned; Siddhartha Deb characterizes the novel as Ishiguro’s most successful examination of childhood and nostalgia, praising that Ishiguro has always been good at presenting the past and childhood as a kind of universal affliction; Max Watman thinks Never Let Me Go rather bluntly confronts the possibility that our technological abilities might outpace our ethical abilities; James Butcher questions the lack of a clear moral status in the fiction, but he contends that the novel is a superb achievement despite its flaws. Moreover, he holds that Never Let Me Go is a dark and desolate novel.

Some domestic research are also of great significance. Gu Wei discusses the Hailsham education system in order to figure out the positive and negative influence of this experimental education system on clones, while Pu Lixing strongly criticizes the education leading to students’ absolute obedience; Yuan Xiaoming explores self-deception of clones when they come to recognize their inexplicable fate; Guo Guoliang and Li Chun study the clones’ efforts to make a room of freedom in their limited lifespan and link the clones to ordinary people in modern society who are also struggling to find the truth of life.