I thought I’d share some work I’ve been doing with my students. Here’s a Never Let Me Go/Things We Didn’t See Coming Introduction. I’ve been having a few technical issues with my website so thought I’d post some content as a form of compensation.
| Compare what the texts say about the relationship between truth and hope. |
The apocryphal consequences of knowing too much unfolds in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming. Under siege, the threat to humanity presents itself in the form of a scientific program that perversely sacrifices life in order to preserve it, the hopelessness of the human condition communicated by a 31 year old narrator on the precipice of death. Ethical questions about what it means to be human play out in Never Let Me Go as a subclass of people are relegated to the shadows in order to rationalise an organ donation program that requires clones to unzip their body parts. Contrary to claims that they are test-tube aberrations, Kathy H embodies qualities that establishes her status and the condition of her peers, as undeniably human, exposing the untenable logic around their sacrificial purpose. The tragic outcome of a fate that requires clones to relinquish love, humanity and a future, is also paralleled in Amsterdam’s novel although in this dystopian text, existential questions about humanity’s self-destruction are raised. Foregrounding Amsterdam’s ethical wonderings, Otis’s condemnatory assessment establishes a causal link between the pre and post apocalyptic world. Arrogance, and a lack of humility denote civilization’s regression and the environmental catastrophes that follow signify man’s fall from grace. Whether what has been lost can be redeemed is uncertain as the unnamed protagonist transitions from an innocent teenager to a cynical young adult and a corrupt middle aged man before finally, confronted with his imminent mortality and the moment of truth. In Never Let Me Go, the harrowing memoir of a woman who exists only to die confronts readers with the truth about the destructive potential of human knowledge whilst in Amsterdam’s text the question about whether what can be known can be understood offers the potential for both enlightenment and despair.
