The End

"I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to leg go, drift apart. That's how I think it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever." pg 282

The ending of this book is really sad. Kathy loses both of her closest friends and she herself becomes a donor. Overall, this book had the ongoing theme of the importance of the past and how hard it can be to let go. Tommy's quote above conveys the entirety of really any relationship between the students at Hailsham. They all try to hold onto their past, but in the end, they cannot keep that grasp forever, because science tears it apart. Ishiguro is telling us that the past has a powerful place in all of our lives--it makes us into who we are today. But, sometimes, we need to let go of past things, whether good or bad, because everything comes to an end at some point.

As this is my second time reading this book, I still liked it. In comparison to Brave New World, I would say that Never Let Me Go was a way less extreme version of the utopia. Both of the books had depressing endings though, that dealt with death. Though the novels were very different, they shared the same message: Science has the ability to control a human being's life, so it should be monitored carefully.