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'The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about'
''Hot tunnels alternated with cool tunnels. Coolness was wedded to discomfort in the form of hard X-rays. By the time they were decanted the embryos had a horror of cold. They were predestined to emigrate to the tropics, to be miner and acetate silk spinners and steel workers. Later on their minds would be made to endorse the judgment of their bodies. "We condition them to thrive on heat," concluded Mr. Foster. "Our colleagues upstairs will teach them to love it."'
"Stability," said the Controller, "stability. No civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability."- chapter 2One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments.Slogan - chapter 2"It makes me feel as though..." he hesitated, searching for words with which to express himself, "as though I were more me, if you see what I mean. More on my own, not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body."chapter 6 - rebelling against what they were conditioned forOrgy-porgy, Ford and fun,
Kiss the girls and make them One.
Boys at one with girls at peace;
Orgy-porgy gives release.Conditioning through hymns, songs to celebrate - chapter 5"When the individual feels, the community reels," Lenina pronounced.
"Well, why shouldn't it reel a bit?"
"Bernard!"Lenina remarks a slogan, which Bernard argues against chapter 6if he had the smallest sense, he'd understand that his punishment is really a reward [...] he's being sent to a place where he'll meet [...] All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren't satisfied with orthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of their own. Every one, in a word, who's any one. I almost envy you, Mr. Watson."Mustaph mond on Bernard, who is horrified and angered that he is being sent away. Chapter 16Happiness is a hard master-particularly other people's happiness. A much harder master, if one isn't conditioned to accept it unquestioningly, than truth.Chapter 16Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness.Mustaph mond Chapter 16Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered.Mustaph mond Chapter 16People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr. Watson-paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too."Mustaph mond Chapter 16you're so conditioned that you can't help doing what you ought to doChapter 17, Mustaph mondAnd what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really aren't any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that's what soma is.""But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
("In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.")John rebelling"But I like the inconveniences."
"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."we were always just too young to understand properly the latest piece of information. But of course we'd take it in at some level, so that before long all this stuff was there in our heads without us ever having examined it properly'NLMG"But we have been taught about all that...Does she think there are things we haven't been told yet?"Kathy, age 12, believes they've been taught everything(Had Miss Lucy continued to raise students' awareness, their) "happiness at Hailsham would have been shattered"NLMG"She'd been a Hailsham student until one day she'd climbed over a fence just to see what it was like outside. This was a long time before us, when the guardians were much stricter, cruel even, and when she tried to get back in, she wasn't allowed. She kept hanging around outside the fences, pleading to be let back in, but no one let her. Eventually, she'd gone off somewhere out there, something had happened and she'd died. But her ghost was always wandering about the woods, gazing over Hailsham, pining to be let back in."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks.NLMG - the students form their own rumours that keep them from running away- a repressed way of oppressing themselves and allows them to cope with being kept within hailsham"I'm not saying we necessarily went around the whole time at that age worrying about the woods. I for one could go weeks hardly thinking about them, and there were even days when a defiant surge of courage would make me think: "How could we believe rubbish like that?" But then all it took would be one little thing—someone retelling one of those stories, a scary passage in a book, even just a chance remark reminding you of the woods—
and that would mean another period of being under that shadow."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks.The rumour reined them in when they began to harbour ideas of rebellion, of opposing their future."...when I heard the first scream. At first I didn't even think it was him, but some maniac who'd been lurking in the bushes. I was already out of the car when the second and third screams came, and by then I knew it was Tommy, though that hardly lessened my urgency."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."I could make out in the mid-distance, near where the field began to fall away, Tommy's figure, raging, shouting, flinging his fists and kicking out."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."Then I realised he too had his arms around me. And so we stood together like that, at the top of that field, for what seemed like ages, not saying anything, just holding each other, while the wind kept blowing and blowing at us, tugging our clothes, and for a moment, it seemed like we were holding onto each other because that was the only way to stop us being swept away into the night."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks.''I was thinking maybe the reason you used to get like that was because at some level you always knew. " (kathy)
...
(Tommy's reply) "But that's a funny idea. Maybe I did know, somewhere deep down. Something the rest of you didn't."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."But when we made a move towards her, she too came forwards, and—perhaps I imagined it—tucked her shoulders in tightly as she passed between us. "
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks.Referring to the madame- the awkward body language highlights an unspoken need to refrain from contact, in psossible fear."Then Madame said, barely audibly: What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?" She let that hang, and I thought I could see tears in her eyes again."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks.Madame repeatedly calls them poor creatures. Pity and sympathy towards them- but she refers to them as subhuman - 'creatures'
rhetorical questions - asking herself rather than them (barely audible) a whisper intended for herself only"We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all. ""She paused, and Tommy and I exchanged glances for the first time in ages. Then I asked:
"Why did you have to prove a thing like that, Miss Emily?
Did someone think we didn't have souls?"
A thin smile appeared on her face. "It's touching, Kathy, to see you so taken aback. It demonstrates, in a way, that we did our job well. As you say, why would anyone doubt you had a soul?"
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks.The act of exchanging glances to measure how the other is feeling- the two undoubtedly are confused, for they themselves believe they have souls. Which leads kathy to question, as though it is an absurd concept- for they do have souls. 'did someone think we didn't?' --> highlights their own personal belief - did someone not believe the same?"Most importantly, we demonstrated to the world that if students were reared in humane, cultivated environments, it was possible for them to grow to be as sensitive and intelligent as any ordinary human being. Before that, all clones—or students, as we preferred to call you—existed only to supply medical science. In the early days, after the war, that's largely all you were to most people. Shadowy objects in test tubes."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks.'test tubes' --> unnaturally concieved, a science experiment."Suddenly there were all these new possibilities laid before us, all these ways to cure so many previously incurable conditions. This was what the world noticed the most, wanted the most. And for a long time, people preferred to believe these organs appeared from nowhere, or at most that they grew in a kind of vacuum. Yes, there were arguments. But by the time people became concerned about . . . about students(italicised), by the time they came to consider just how you were reared, whether you should have been brought into existence at all, well by then it was too late. There was no way to reverse the process. How can you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable, how can you ask such a world to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days?"
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."So for a long time you were kept in the shadows, and people did their best not to think about you. And if they did, they tried to convince themselves you weren't really like us. That you were less than human, so it didn't matter."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."Here was the world, requiring students to donate. While that remained the case, there would always be a barrier against seeing you as properly human."She was a nice enough girl, Lucy Wainright. But after she'd been with us for a while, she began to have these ideas. She thought you students had to be made more aware. More aware of what lay ahead of you, who you were, what you were for. She believed you should be given as full a picture as possible. That to do anything less would be somehow to cheat you. We considered her view and concluded she was mistaken."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."You see, we were able to give you something, something which even now no one will ever take from you, and we were able to do that principally by sheltering you. Hailsham would not have been Hailsham if we hadn't. Very well, sometimes that meant we kept things from you, lied to you. Yes, in many ways we fooled you. I suppose you could even call it that."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."But if she'd had her way, your happiness at Hailsham would have been shattered."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."Is she afraid of you? We're all afraid of you. I myself had to fight back my dread of you all almost every day I was at Hailsham."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."There were times I'd look down at you all from my study window and I'd feel such revulsion . . ." She stopped, then something in her eyes flashed again. "
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world.
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."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."She reached out her hand, all the while staring into my face, and placed it on my cheek. I could feel a trembling go all through her body, but she kept her hand where it was, and I could see again tears appearing in her eyes."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks.The first and only contact between Madame and a clone, specifically Kathy. The only contact seen between a 'normal' and a clone in the entire novel. The fear is apparent, 'trembling' but it is possible the encountering changed her mind, forced to witness the two nearing the close of their lives, which urges her to 'keep her hand' there, despite a possible revulsion.
Feels complete utter pity for them."I think Miss Lucy was right. Not Miss Emily."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks.Tommy to Kathy - he was always the lucid one. reflecting upon the madames words, he believes they should have been taught and told about their future- feels misled?"Let's have a bit of fun pretending. That other woman in there, her friend, the old one in the gallery. Art students, that's what she thought we were. Do you think she'd have talked to us like that if she'd known what we really were? What do you think she'd have said if we'd asked her?"
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."If you want to look for possibles, if you want to do it properly, then you look in the gutter. You look in rubbish bins.
Look down the toilet, that's where you'll find where we all came from."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."The idea was that when the time came, you'd be able just to unzip a bit of yourself, a kidney or something would slide out, and you'd hand it over. It wasn't something we found so funny in itself; it was more a way of putting each other off our food. You unzipped your liver, say, and dumped it on someone's plate, that sort of thing."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks." It was just done to get a laugh, to put someone off their dinner—and, I suppose, as some way of acknowledging what was in front of us. [...] we no longer shrank from the subject of donations as we'd have done a year or two earlier; but neither did we think about it very seriously, or discuss it. All that business about "unzipping," that was typical of the way the whole subject impinged on us when we were thirteen.immature acts, to obscure the sombre tones of what donating actually entailsSo I'd say Miss Lucy had it about right when she said, a couple of years later, that we'd been "told and not told." And what's more, now I think about it, I'd say what Miss Lucy said to us that afternoon led to a real shift in our attitudes. It was after that day, jokes about donations faded away, and we started to think properly about things. If anything, the donations went back to being a subject to be avoided, but not in the way it had been when we were younger. This time round it wasn't awkward or embarrassing any more; just sombre and serious.
KA"
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."Hannah had the theory that it was their duty to make us have sex because otherwise we wouldn't be good donors later on. According to her, things like your kidneys and pancreas didn't work properly unless you kept having sex."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."even though they knew, intellectually, that we couldn't have babies, they still felt uneasy about us doing it because deep down they couldn't quite believe we wouldn't end up with babies."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."She said this quite softly, and because people were still shouting, she was more or less drowned out. But I heard her clearly enough. "You get terrible accidents sometimes." What accidents? Where? But no one picked her up on it, and we went back to discussing our poem.''
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."No, no, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to interrupt you," she was saying, and I could see she was talking to two boys sitting on the benches immediately in front of her. Her voice wasn't exactly strange, but she was speaking very loudly, in the sort of voice she'd use to announce something to the lot of us, and that was why we'd all gone quiet. "No, Peter, I'm going to have to stop you. I can't listen to you any more and keep silent."
Then she raised her gaze to include the rest of us and took a deep breath. "All right, you can hear this, it's for all of you. It's time someone spelt it out."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."Peter shrugged. "We were just talking about what it would feel like if we became actors. What sort of life it would be."
"Yes," Miss Lucy said, "and you were saying to Gordon you'd have to go to America to stand the best chance."
Peter J. shrugged again and muttered quietly: "Yes, Miss Lucy."
But Miss Lucy was now moving her gaze over the lot of us.
"I know you don't mean any harm. But there's just too much talk like this. I hear it all the time, it's been allowed to go on, and it's not right." I could see more drops coming off the gutter and landing on her shoulder, but she didn't seem to notice. "If no one else will talk to you," she continued, "then I will. The problem, as I see it, is that you've been told and not told. You've been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way. But I'm not. If you're going to have decent lives, then you've got to know and know properly."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks." If you're to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks.Miss lucy to the students"None of you will go to America, none of you will be film stars.
And none of you will be working in supermarkets as I heard some of you planning the other day. Your lives are set out for you."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks.Miss lucy to the students"That's what each of you was created to do. You're not like the actors you watch on your videos, you're not even like me. You were brought into this world for a purpose, and your futures, all of them, have been decided."
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks."And then there's this odd tendency among donors to treat a fourth donation as something worthy of congratulations. A donor "on a fourth," even one who's been pretty unpopular up till then, is treated with special respect. Even the doctors and nurses play up to this: a donor on a fourth will go in for a check and be greeted by whitecoats smiling and shaking their hand.
Excerpt From: . "Never Let Me Go." iBooks.they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. (bnw)similarly with NLMG - they're conditoned to repress fears for their 'completion', and that it is an unstoppable event that all will go throughAnd if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts.favour ignorance over realityChristianity without tears_that's what soma isreference to what was, and what had caused pain (look at section of bible)'Liberty!' He laughed. 'Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!Mustaph mond referring to john's chucking of soma (speaking directly to him)we sheltered you during those years, and we gave you your childhoods" ' (Ishiguro, p.263).the teachers (madame) 'sheltered' them, from the truth. So that they could live as any other ...
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