Never Let Me Go
參賽者：曾佳彥（應外三）
名次：佳作
書名：Never Let Me Go
得獎作品：
In what ways do we identify ourselves? In what ways are we different from the others? In the novel Never Let Me Go, the leading character, Kathy, says at the end that Hailsham is “something no one can take away.” It’s important for her to seek out donors who are “from the past,” “people from Hailsham.” It was because Hailsham stood for her precious childhood. She grew up with her two best friends, Ruth, and Tommy, at Hailsham. Even though she had left there for years, her memories of Hailsham never went away. For them cloned humans, they shared the same fate—becoming donors at last to end up their lives. It’s what all of them had to face. There’s no special treatment to anyone. Under this circumstance, Kathy had to find a way to identify herself, to know who she was, and to know what she owned but the others didn’t. Hailsham was where she was brought up. Hailsham made her special. The time in Hailsham was the most unforgettable to her. Hailsham represented her personality, her dignity, and her life. And it’s something no one can take away from her.
In my opinion, Never Let Me Go is, indeed, a novel of tragedy. The cloned humans were reproduced to save the “normal” humans’ lives. They couldn’t have their freedom of living longer. They couldn’t make a choice on what they wanted to become except a carer or a donor. They were humans, but they weren’t like us. They didn’t have human rights. They were more close to animals. We took what organs we needed from their bodies, almost like we did on animals. One day we develop a more advanced and scientific world, we won’t need them. They won’t mean anything to us. They’ll be like rubbish in this world. I was touched by what Madame had said in Chapter Twenty-Two, “And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.” It’s a tragedy because we deprive them of their freedom, their human rights, their value, and finally, their lives.
After finishing reading the novel, I found that the final paragraph of the last chapter had impressed me most. Kathy imagined Tommy appearing here in “the spot where everything I’d ever lost since my childhood had washed up.” In this phase of her life, she was alone because Tommy and Ruth had both gone. Reasonably she should feel depressed and hopeless, while she had foreseen it. She had been preparing for becoming a donor without Tommy and Ruth by her side. She wasn’t surprised by the situation. She couldn’t deny her destiny, and she didn’t want to, either. She had made up her mind to face it alone. We can call it her “courage,” but we also have to recognize the truth that she had no choice. Was it really her courage, or she was forced to face the destiny? I think the answer belongs to the latter.
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