欧宝娱乐

I both love and hate this book. I couldn't stop thinking about it when I read it in 2006. It was sorta a "random" find because I saw the book cover and thought it looked interesting. I'd read Ishiguro years ago, The Remains of the Day, and liked him. Didn't remember the name, though, so I'll categorize this in my mental list (I'm a mentalist) as an almost-never-was random read of mine. I almost wish it was a never was, because I've gotta keep a close watch on my moods lest I get to feeling too sick and depressed. Never Let Me Go is one of those reads... Just saw the movie and now I'm disturbed by it all over again. Some of it resides in my mind like creepy memories, and some feels less cold because of how upset I got, which is better than how I felt when reading the book. It could be taken as a cautionary tale of wasting time, but not much moves me into action. I'm more likely to feel bad. It is creepy to see how Kathy got to that point. I sorta understand it, and I also rail against it. Noooo, don't let that happen, moods do go as they come and nothing is the only answer. (I need a comfort read.)
I get why Kathy H. did not run away. I don't agree that it was conditioning, however. They were not raised to do or not do everything. Were they told to fall in love with each other? No. Like how she does not fight Ruth for Tommy, she didn't fight for her right to live longer. Like how she doesn't make the most of the time she had, or care about toys or art or anything else anymore, she doesn't fight for her life. It was an interesting look at that kind of giving-up depression. The disconnect out of hopelessness. While others invented fantasies of ways out, Kathy did not. She even had a car. She could have gone somewhere else. With her last time before donating, she stares into a field. Not even really dreaming. Fuck. I'm afraid of ever getting to be like that. (One of the reasons why I regretted reading this.)
Tommy rages inside and then does nothing to fix his problems. It made sense that he did not run away either. What to do after you've gotten mad? Crying makes me feel sick, not better.
Ruth? At first she picks someone else to have power over, her school mate Kathy. Like many in prison will do to feel like they still have control over their lives, she finds power she can have over someone else. Still, they let her do this to them. I don't think it was conditioning that they gave up in this way but their personalities. If you make decisions of your own, you're not conditioned. They were not robots. In some ways, they still wanted things, even Kathy. It was like how being told you have six months to live or the Nazis are coming and some just watch tv and wait to die and others go off for a last minute trip to South Africa (or the exhibit in Epcot). Drink and smoke and fuck and drown out the feelings. Or take care of other dying people and pretend that you're just fine with it, fine with the fact that it will soon be your turn. Kill yourself rather than die feeling miserable in a hospital. Some do that, others don't. But it's not all do a and none do b. None of the above, even. Day to day lives are easily wasted like Kathy's were. (I can't say I did anything special today.) If you believe that upbringing a d genetics are the entire answer to a person's soul, than sure... Me, I can't accept that. I don't feel that Ishiguro made a good enough case, either.
I wish that they had made more of their own society in the institutions of schools and hospitals. Learned from each other. It's not like they didn't have other examples within their own group to watch, right? Their own little rules. They had a grapevine of news. I wish that someone had tried to fuck up their health by drinking or smoking cigarettes. Not everyone could have been like Kathy. Some could have studied books and watched tv shows and learned things. They made paintings? They had ideas? Still thought for themselves, if in their own terms that were not influenced by a society we know today. I wanted more of their own terms. (Hell, I needed them to have it.)
It was sick and horrible to make clones for organs (not that it is realistic. Humans don't have problems performing illegal trafficking for organs in today's world, or making people slaves, or genocide. Why make the effort to make more people?). People have done fucked up things to each other since like forever. Well, yeah, and then what? Do you let them dictate EVERYTHING? I don't believe that people are made to live like that all the time. The heart only lives in fear for so long before it gets used to do it. There's the sick cloud of depression, but not everybody is like that either. Not everyone in concentration camps accepted it as God's will. Not everyone waited. Some got to run away. Orders and conditioning isn't always true. I was told racist things growing up, I was told that I was dumb and ugly and no one would ever like me. Conditioning is not the entire answer. To the peope who answer conditioning, did you do everything you were told?
I liked the issues of quality of life over quantity. Everyone dies and living forever isn't really the point. It's what you do with the time you have, despite everyone else, despite a lot of things. Cathy didn't do much with hers. That's more tragic to me than how she died. Not what was done to her, but the other things she allowed to be done to her, like losing Tommy. I wish this book had touched on more than the easy giving up. What's human nature? I don't wanna to take a people do what they are told belief. People are not all the same, no matter where they start from. (And I'm a natural clone as an identical twin. I'm proof that starting out the same in the same environment does not breed exactly the same.)
I feel really bad about this.