[Novel] Moral Problems Regarding Human Cloning in "Never Let Me Go"

 

Through the eyes of Kathy H., we are guided through her experiences as a clone growing up in an institution meant to rear the students in human environments.  Ishiguro’s novel was not written as a means to argue the ethics of cloning, however, his novel Never Let Me Go serves as a reference for the bioethical debate. Kathy H.’s narration can help answer the questions of how biologically engineered beings should be treated in relation to their classification as humans, as Ishiguro attempts to define humanity through the eyes of a Kathy H., a clone with experiences much like that of any other ordinary human. The story does not intend to give the novel a futuristic feel, in fact the novel centers on the experience of the narrator and her fellow clones rather than focusing on the scientific aspect of their creation.

Never Let Me Go is essentially Ishiguro’s warning that we could potentially outgrow our moral values and become a cold and heartless society of people who live in a harsh, cruel world, scientifically advanced, but unkind. Several problems resulting from the practice of human cloning include the violation of human dignity, violation of human rights and the identity matter of the clones.

The cloned children are regarded by the people who run their school as repositories of organs rather than as individual persons, as objects, not human subjects. This dehumanization is inflicted both through the way in which the children are treated. They are constantly monitored by guardians. The physicians and nurses responsible for keeping the children healthy, so later their organs can be used, also dehumanize them. In medically examining them, they act as though they are mechanics making sure a car is in good running order, not health-care professionals caring for patients. The dehumanization shows that non-clones human treatment violates clones human dignity. Not a single human deserves to be treated like this. They need to be respected as human.

Not only violates clones’ human dignity but non-clones human also violates their human rights by limiting their move and choices in life. The students are clones, that is to say models, or copies of their human counterparts. Early in the novel, Kathy describes the “normal” people as models: “Since each of us was copied at some point by a normal person, there must be, for each of us, somewhere out there, a model getting on with his or her life” (Ishiguro, 137).The students on the other hand may have a genetic origin but, importantly, they have no contact or knowledge of their own original. The students are never given the opportunity to learn of who they are modeled from. These clones are kept in the shadows as the society is willing to accept the organs but not to acknowledge their origin.

The society depicted is Never Let Me Go is intelligent, scientific and cruel. They wish to gain years and life from the organs “donated” by the clones but not to acknowledge their existence. For this reason, the clones are kept physically separated from the people they donate to, and imprisoned from the outside world. Motifs such as fences appear numerous times throughout the novel; this boundary always keeping them away from what they want most in the world, to be normal. Guardians always persuade them not to go outside the fences because the woods outside the fence can be very dangerous to them. These woods have a strong grasp on the students’ imaginations, as unequalled legends of the horrifying fates of those that dared to wander into them (50). Especially the story of a girl who ventures off and is thus not allowed in when she returns.

At Hailsham the clones are surrounded constantly by Guardians who not only teach the children but also watch over them. They are constantly told “you’re students, you’re special” (63). They are taught to accept their fate unquestionably and so are kept in emotional isolation too. This is extremely saddening to the reader as the clones could escape once they leave Hailsham for The Cottages. It appears that they are physically free from the fences and boundaries that emphasize their imprisonment. However, they cannot get past the mental blocks that have been put in their mind from the humans who have always shaped their lives.

The students in Never Let Me Go have very limited knowledge of the outside world and even less contact with it; the world that effectively made them. One such example is the reference to the “Culture Briefing”: “These were classes where we had to play various people we’d find out there – waiters in cafés, policemen and so on” (108). When they leave school, they do not get jobs. They can only become careers like Kathy, who helps clones go through the pains of the operations; come to grips with death and lives without hope. In this sense their lives have no meaning. The clones suffer not only physically during the 'donations', but also emotionally as they separate from each other. Kathy describes one of here 'patients':

“He knew he was close to completing and so that’s what he was doing: getting me to describe things to him, so they’d really sink in, so that maybe during those sleepless nights, with the drugs and the pain and the exhaustion, the line would blur between what were my memories and what were his.” (5)

The clones, on the brink of 'completion' are exhausted from pain. As Kathy knows how emotional pain can sometimes be worse than physical pain, tries to free this clone of his emotional pain and that way making him suffer less.

Two things that always make the clones lost their identity as a human being, namely lack of their background and confusion about their original. The clones don't have families. They have first names and initials only. As we read further on in the novel, we realize that they have no parents. When Kathy, Tommy and Ruth are living at the Cottages, Kathy wonders “if one day we might all of us move into a place like that and carry on our lives together” (142). Kathy and Ruth bicker like sisters in an exchange about what real families are like:

“So that’s it, that’s what’s upsetting poor little Kathy. Ruth isn’t paying enough attention to her. Ruth’s got big new friends and baby sister isn’t getting played with so often…’ ‘Stop all that. Anyway, that’s not how it works in real families. You don’t know anything about it.’ ‘Oh Kathy, the great expert on families.’” (122)

Kathy and Ruth demonstrate a lack of understanding of what it means to belong to a real family. Before they become lovers, Kathy is almost a maternal figure to Tommy. As children, Kathy reprimands him as if she is his mother: “‘Tommy,” I said, quite sternly. ‘There’s mud all over your shirt’” (11). This sense of family is drummed into the students by the guardians. They are told that after Hailsham, there will be no more guardians and they are to “look after each other” (115), yet the guardians are replaced as surrogate parents by the veterans at the Cottages, during a period which constitutes the students’ university years (117).

Ishiguro never states who was responsible for the mass production of the ‘students’ at Hailsham or at any other ‘school’. There are rumors that float around among the clones such as the rumor mentioned by Ruth, “We all know it. We’re modeled from trash. Junkies, prostitutes, winos, tramps. Convicts, maybe, just so long as they aren’t psychos. That’s what we come from. We all know it, so why don’t we say it?” (166). She feels like she was made by low status people because she can’t find her original.

Never Let Me Go featuring various scenes that intends to demonstrate to the reader that human cloning is a human who has the dignity of human dignity as normal in general. The novel also shows the predictions about what will happen in the future, particularly the ethical problems of cloning human being. Cloning technology is also not free of ethical problems because the object of experimentation is a human. The emergence of moral issues that arise in the novel Never Let Me Go as a result of cloning technology are the abused of human dignity, the human clones identity, the right to freedom of man which has become human nature from birth. Human clones do not have their autonomous right, because the right was taken by some institutions that control them.