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There's is little more beautiful than an English countryside on a sunny day. Tranquility defined. It is no surprise, then, that the youth of our characters is spent at a boarding school in the English countryside where they lots of room to run around, play soccer, and find their own places. As adult Kathy narrates, she even mentions looking around for her old school sometimes when she sees an open field. While some people did have very bad childhoods, in general we think of our childhoods in a very sunny kind of way. Life was easier, no responsibility, and everything was new and fun. Is this not what you think of when gazing upon a well manicured English hillside complete with cottages and old buildings? Not only this, but the narrator, Kathy, also speaks of different locations on the campus where students would carve out their niche and meet with one another. This is something we still do. Many tell stories of diners, coffee shops, rivers, lakes, etc where they and their friends would meet up and spend the majority of their free time. They write songs and stories and poetry depicting emotions, carefree attitudes, and adolescent attempts at love. All of these things can be found in Never Let Me Go. However, the school has a system of art exchanges and a mysterious lady named Madame who selects only the best work for her gallery. We find out that this gallery is meant to convince the world that clones have souls. This is a very postmodern style of storytelling in that what the author has not said is every bit as important as what he has. By setting up this system of artistic ability showing that clones have souls, there is a not so subtle jab at society and how we place value on people. Those who do not contribute to society in an acceptable way are outcasts and dehumanized. In this same way, Tommy's character is often taunted and picked on because people like to see him lose his temper and throw tantrums, but also because he doesn't produce any artwork. As soon as a guardian tells Tommy that his art isn't important he stops getting upset and learns to control himself. Another way of putting it is that after Tommy finds himself accepted for his differences he is able to stop raging against those who reject him.
Another use of setting that is mentioned is in stories of the woods surrounding Hailsham. The students are told of other students dying in these woods or never being allowed to re-enter the school and subsequently starving to death. In the world we have things called fairytales and ghost stories. There are myths and legends of gods and goddesses, not to mention freaks of nature that steal people, eat people, or transform people into other disfigured creatures. They are often morality tales or stories used to keep children from going places they should not go. This is the function of the woods and the stories told about this location. And the clones react in a very human way. So human, in fact, that it affects them well into their adulthood. They simply accept that they are here to supply spare parts to the better part of humanity, those naturally born instead of created in labs, and do not try to change anything, revolt, or run away. As the reader it can even cause you to get a little irritated. Oddly enough, this western writer, Ishiguro, weaves a tale in which the clones react in a very eastern sort of way, putting the good of natural humanity above themselves instead of seeking what should be rightfully theirs.
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The Isolated Cottages
After graduating Hailsham, the students move into cottages while they spend time getting adjusted to life outside of school and their bodies continue to mature. During this time they can choose to become carers. Carers take care of donors, which are clones who are actively donating body parts to humans who need them. If this hasn't caused you to wonder if a stiff draft just blew through your emotions, perhaps it hasn't been understood how this setting of isolation contributes to the story of these characters.
When we think of isolation it isn't usually a pleasant thought. The clones are sent to out of the way areas while they finish their maturing and preparing to become carers. It is a lonely place away from humanity and it is here that our three main characters, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, begin to experience isolation from one another as well. Kathy narrates how the place looked in the springtime, but much of the action takes place in the fall and winter when things look dreary and the ground is becoming hard. In this same way, the characters begin to get cold toward one another and gradually drift apart. First, Kathy leaves to become a carer, and eventually Ruth and Tommy, who have dated off and on since school, break up for good. The cold, the rain, and the isolation of the cottages contributes much to the backdrop of this narrative, and all of the humanity we watch would seem out of place were it told on warm summer days when birds sing and flowers bloom. The humanity within us simply won't accept such images beacuse we don't experience them as being true. It's actually quite possible that there were more sunny days than Kathy remembers, but since the time itself is a very unhappy one full of sexual tension, angst, and loss it makes perfect sense that she remembers so much about rain, cold, and isolation.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. New York: Vintage International, 2006. Print.
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