Analysis of structure and form in Never Let Me Go 3
- Created by: mimidollins
- Created on: 29-12-20 17:37
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- Structure and Form of NLMG
- Ishiguro slowly reveals reality of student's lives
- Expects readers to have same experience from chapter 1
- "If you're one of them..."
- Reality of their lives not made explicit until Miss Lucy's speech in ch. 7
- Creates sustained suspense
- What do the readers want revealed/ explained?
- perversion of the meaning of "donation"
- "completing"
- role of "guardians"
- concept of "deferrals"
- concept of "possibles"
- their infertility
- role of "carers"
- real function of Hailsham
- how the characters spend their time
- Characters likes and dislikes
- How they are like and unlike us
- Similar to how Miss Emily gradually reveals the truth to the students
- Only reveals when the reader is ready to bare it, near the end of the novel
- Expects readers to have same experience from chapter 1
- Regular use of foreshadowing
- "I realise now just how much of what occurred later came out of our time at Hailsham" ch 4, pg 37
- Looks in detail at past so what happens later seems more poignant
- Foreshadows deaths of Ruth and Tommy
- Intensifies themes of inevitability of fate
- Non-linear/ discursive
- Begins and ends with 31 year old K. Rest of novel in the middle like a disorganised sandwich
- What makes the rest of the novel disorganised?
- Complex storytelling, flashbacks and frequent time-shifts
- Part of K's characterisation
- K presented as frightened, sharing her past by drip feeding terrifying info instead of organising thoughts coherently
- Doesn't have time or focus to organise thoughts coherently due to demand of being a carer or because it is a spoken narrative
- Lost everything except memories and a terrifying future lies ahead of her
- Dwelling on memories is a coping mechanism
- K presented as frightened, sharing her past by drip feeding terrifying info instead of organising thoughts coherently
- Reflection on the nature of memory
- Part of K's characterisation
- Complex storytelling, flashbacks and frequent time-shifts
- I is aware that human minds digress and are unreliable; adds to K's humanity
- What makes the rest of the novel disorganised?
- e.g. Ch 2, pg 16: Mention of being Ruth's carer in Dover which sparks memories of T. Not until pg 45 where R is revisited
- Fewer digressions into distant past in latter chapters as story comes closer to present
- Only 3 linear episodes: Norfolk, Boat, Littlehampton
- Adds to puzzle and suspense for reader
- Reader has to thread together apparently disconnected fragments
- Have to piece details of their fate together like children have to at Hailsham
- Sense of exhaustion which K experiences as a carer
- Begins and ends with 31 year old K. Rest of novel in the middle like a disorganised sandwich
- Presented as a spoken (not a written) narrative
- Why Kathy is telling her story to an unnamed person is not explained
- Intertextual reference to The Odyssey and One Thousand and One Nights on page 233 come from an oral heritage
- Once K is gone, there will be no students left with memories of H to record
- Full of colloquialisms and repetitions of spoken language
- Doesn't obscure pace of the narrative
- Ishiguro slowly reveals reality of student's lives
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