GUV:We’ve established three central themes of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go are nostalgia, friendship, identity. Just words unless you got evidence! Alright. Green, go!
PC GREEN:Well, may I say what an honour it’s been working for you Guv.
GUV:No I meant, show me the evidence.
PC GREEN:No, yeah, makes more sense. Well, it’s narrated by Kathy, and the whole thing’s narrated in flashback so nostalgia is a big theme.
PC BENNETT:Even when we’re in the present, when she’s physically driving forward, visiting the recovery centres, she’s always reminiscing, always looking back. Never forward.
GUV:Why is she fixated on her past?
PC BENNETT:No point planning for a life you’ll never live I s’pose.
GUV:Yes, in this dystopia, clones only exist to be organ donors for humans.
PC GREEN:You can’t blame her for not wanting to think about the fact she’ll be feeling as sick as her donors soon. And then well, dead.
GUV:You’re being a bit quiet Sheldon. Subject matter too edgy for you?
SHANE:It’s Shane, Chief.
GUV:Yeah it is a shame, but show me the evidence!
SHANE:Well, by the time Kathy’s in her 30’s, she’s lost all the things she ever cared about.
Hailsham’s closed, her two best friends are dead.
PC BENNETT:“Completed” you mean?
SHANE:She mentions “there are fewer and fewer donors left that I remember”. Kathy has memories and she cherishes them.
GUV:Right. Good. Friendship.
PC GREEN:The friendships at Hailsham are layered and complicated, like real life…
…but friendship’s for them are more intense because with no family, friendship is the only thing they know. S’all they’ve got.
PC BENNETT: Can I just clarify, we’re not friends.
PC GREEN: Kathy and Ruth have their ups and downs, but by the end of the novel, Kathy has become Ruth’s carer and their friendship is strong still.
SHANE: “The instant I saw her again at that recovery centre in Dover, all our differences - while they didn’t exactly vanish - seemed not nearly as important as all the other things.”
PC GREEN: Do you remember how cute Kathy was to Tommy at the beginning when he was throwing his tempers?
PC BENNETT:(with respect) Yes, she approached him despite domineering Ruth’s “urgent whisper” to return to the group. Takes some cahooners to do that.
SHANE: Guts.
ALL: What?
SHANE: Tommy thought Kathy had “guts” because she stuck up for him.
PC GREEN: Would you stick up for me?
PC BENNETT: Aw, 100%… no.
GUV:(to Shane)Identity. Sherlock, shoot.
SHANE:Like most young people, the Hailsham students are consumed with questions about themselves and their place in the world. But these guys are clones, there’s no family. They’ve not even got surnames. But there’s talk about something called a possible, which was the person you were modelled from, the person your DNA came from. A human connection, if you like.
PC GREEN:And that’s why they went to Norfolk, because two ex students thought they’d spotted Ruth’s possible.
SHANE:But it wasn’t a successful trip. “The more I heard her, and looked at her, the less she seemed like Ruth.”
GUV:OK. One more example and I’ll take you all to Nandos.
PC GREEN: Their personal collections! The sales and exchanges were a big excitement in their lives. They’d buy each others work, or secondhand goods with tokens awarded to them by their Guardians.
SHANE/PC BENNETT:(reading with gusto) “they were our only means of building up a collection of personal possessions.”
GUV:(nodding sagely) It was a way of expressing individuality, some kind of identity. Like my jokes about taking you all to Nandos. Got you didnt I?
PC GREEN: Yeah.
GUV:We’re not going to Nandos. Well I’m going to Nando’s. I mean, you can come if you like but you have to pay for it with your own money.
Key themes of nostalgia, friendship and identity in Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro are explored via a dramatised police case conference.
The police officers attach key moments and quotations from the text to their evidence wall to support their explorations of how these themes are highlighted through the novel.
This is from the series: LIT P.D
Teacher Notes
Students could use this clip as part of their study of the novel or as part of their revision work.
The ideas in the film could be used as part of initial work on an exploration of the themes, using the quotations and ideas as stimulus for their own presentation on one of the themes explored.
Curriculum Notes
This short film is suitable for teaching English literature at GCSE in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and National 5 and Higher in Scotland.
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