Dystopia in Never Let Me Go (genre 2)
- Created by: mimidollins
- Created on: 31-12-20 15:08
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- Dystopia in NLMG
- Rebellion and conforming
- Few people are a revolutionary
- Feudal system and belief in GCB from the Middle Ages dictates we have a fixed place in society which can't be changed
- Fusion of the Eastern acceptance of fate (philosophical) and English acceptance of death (inevitable)
- Characters accept cruelty as it is normal and they have no alternative whereas readers are less inclined to accept.
- Fact they can't rebel puts treatment of clones on par with the Holocaust. Both treat the helpless as subhuman
- gives novel an elegiac sense of hopelessness
- E.g deferrals and Tommy taking pride in performance as a donor
- Readers can only guess at fate of clones who try to escape and how easy it would be to escape
- Maybe the "terrible accidents" which Miss Lucy describes pg 77
- Medical tests which test when their medically fit to lose the next part of themselves could also serve to keep track of where they are
- The Social Contract
- Idea created by Thomas Hobbes
- We give up some of our personal freedoms in exchange for a guarantee that the person who runs our country will have our physical safety as their prime concern
- When the Social Contract breaks, we enter "summum malum" (the greatest evil)
- continual fear of death and life is solitary, poor, brutish and short, hence being unable to be productive in our life
- Carers are solitary
- K visits department stores where "you can hang around and enjoy yourself"
- Carers are poor
- K has a bedsit and car but no salary and luxury
- Carers lives are short
- Carers face brutish fate in operating room
- Carers are solitary
- continual fear of death and life is solitary, poor, brutish and short, hence being unable to be productive in our life
- Philosophy which has led Miss Emily to run Hailsham in her way
- Writers interested in plight of most powerless members of society
- Lack of happy ending reinforces argument that authoritarianism, once indulged, is impossible to put out
- Goes against idea implicit in each of the 7 basic story types that the world will have undergone restoration by end of story
- Few people are a revolutionary
- Set in late 1990s
- Time of government by liberal democracy (human rights respected)
- Viscount Hailsham, prominent British politician during 60s-80s
- said we live “under an elective dictatorship”
- Government free to pass any laws when elected. governments will neglect the rights/interests of minorities, and will be free to pursue an ideological agenda.
- said we live “under an elective dictatorship”
- Against markers of a dystopia, like K not rebelling
- Concept of novel seems more realistic as the setting and trends (walkmans) are recognizable, and hence more horrifying
- Like a parallel universe, mirroring idea of parallel lives of their possibles
- Concept of novel seems more realistic as the setting and trends (walkmans) are recognizable, and hence more horrifying
- What questions are the readers left with?
- Do we treat farm animals properly?
- Farm animals treated more humanely as they don't know they're living under an extended death sentence
- What regulations should apply to the donation of human organs?
- Link to scandal regarding retention or organs for human transplant at Alder Hey Hospital from 1988-95 which led to the Human Tissue Act of 2004
- Why do we tend to forget ethics when issues of life and death arise?
- Why are we opposed to giving life to someone with potential to replace us in the genetic hierarchy and not to situations like the characters are in?
- Which donations can we survive?
- Can a society which leaves its most vulnerable members to die be called a society at all?
- Do we treat farm animals properly?
- Rebellion and conforming
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