Tara and I are reading Never Let Me Go for this quarter's reading groups, and honestly I'm surprised how little I know about the purpose and people in this story based on how far I am into the book. I mean, 60 pages should be enough to give you at LEAST a basic understanding of what the story is supposed to feel like, but I'm having a hard time even gleaning a sense of mood from it all. The only word I can use to describe it is "eerie," but it's not a strong emotion that I feel when reading by any means and I primarily took that from the knowledge I took from the book's description on Amazon. BUT BUT BUT I'm not even close to giving up on it; I've been dying to read more science fiction since I read The Transall Saga by Gary Paulsen in 5th grade and it changed my life.
Just for some background, this book follows the lives of a group of children who attend a boarding school in the English countryside called Hailsham. All we know is that the kids at Hailsham are very special (still not sure why) and they are treated as such. The first section starts to hint at why these kids might be so special; One of the children (Tommy) has been shunned by fellow students for months, which we find out is almost a direct result of the fact that Tommy has not put any of his art on display recently. This seems like such an odd reason for bullying to commence, but it goes even deeper when Tommy proposes the idea of "not being creative," a concept that makes the main character/narrator very very uncomfortable. Therefore, I'm thinking these children are set apart from others due to their creative capabilities.
This concept immediately takes me back to last year's AP Lang exam, which included an essay asking the writer to convince a school board whether creativity classes would be a good idea to implement into school a curriculum. Honestly, I think that essay has got to have been one of the best essays I've ever written, timed or otherwise. I was so strongly opposed to the concept that I had more reasons to speak against it than I could fit on a page. It would needlessly drain precious funding, favor one type of child over another, and ultimately not be successful in nurturing highly creative children. After all, what teacher can be trusted with the responsibility of telling a child that his or her creations are not "creative enough." So much potential for damage.
Perhaps we will see these exact conflicts arising in Never Let Me Go more than they already have. I mean, if a lack of displayed artwork is enough to evoke merciless bullying on a young child and cause even the teachers to say "he was asking for it with that lack of creativity," who knows what kind of chaos could emerge from such a strange value system.
Why are you such a good writer? Good heavens it's intimidating. Also, shame on you for discussing essay prompts! You signed a thing! I agree with what you're saying, but it definitely seems like the art work is just a cover up, doesn't it? I get the idea that creativity ties into donations some how. I don't really understand yet (because they literally give nothing away), and I'm nearly half way through, but it seems like there might be some sort of crisis going on. Again, this isn't a spoiler because I still don't know what's happening, but I think that a lot of people are like cyborgs or something and they need fresh humans to supplement their consciousness and replace their decaying bodies. That might be a bit of a stretch.
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