When we took part in the interpretation presentation near the end, I began to think very deeply about the book. My group was assigned the role of the guardians. When we were asked to defend why we were the most important to society (or whatever the statement was…something along those lines), we had difficulties supporting our side. Someone in my group said “without us, the donor’s lives would essentially be pointless.” Then someone else said, “well what does it matter if the donor’s lives are pointless, they are going to die either way?” I, and a few others I believe, instantly realized that this can relate to us in the exact same way. We’re living, we’re all going to die, so all we can do is try to make the best out of the time we have. Christina raised this point to the class at the end and running out of time, I obviously still wanted to talk about it a lot more. I feel like going off of this, we could get a bit into religion. Without being too controversial, I think this book could say a lot about why people have religion.
I also want to talk more about if the donors are necessary. When we discussed it a little bit, it made me think about animal testing. I once heard someone say “If a distorted animal saves my family from cancer, so be it.” I don’t know a lot about animal testing, but this statement sounded so cruel…until I thought about it more. For this reason, I’d like to talk more about how to donors are necessary, in a personal context. I want to consider one of my family members needing a donation, and how concerned I would be with where it came from. I don’t know how I feel about it, so I would like to get more of other people’s opinions on that.
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I think this point of view is extremely crucial to our discussions in class. Sure, the actions in the book are morally reprehensible to us just sitting here and reading it. But what if we were one of the "normals"? What if it was our brother or mother or friend with a disease that could be cured, and maybe at the expense of an it we didn't even really acknowledge? I remember we touched a little bit on this in class, but I think we had to cut it a little short. If we were brought up in the "normal" society of Never Let Me Go, would we even give it a second thought, because it was the norm? For them, its not abnormal; they have lived with the donor programme for so long that it doesn't seem wrong anymore.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think, in regards to the "going to die anyway" statement, the problem, or the difference, between us and the donors is that we are not forced by another person into dieing. We die because of an outside force, or of natural causes, but our deaths are not planned out by people around us.
I would agree with the statement that position of donors can relate to us in many ways. Most of us went to school, where we had to work on art and crafts and other assignments in order to prove to our teachers that we have souls. Throughout our lives many of us have to work hard to support our living, to survive, so we are donating our time, strength, years of disappointment, health, labor, to fulfill our purpose, to meet expectations of society, family. We are not just waiting for death eventhough we know that it's inevitable - we live in the world of illusions that we create for ourselves.I guess we are in a way donors, guardians, and some of us, on top of the food chain are normals.
ReplyDeleteOn Michelle's comment, I would like to say that those of us who live in developed countries, and enjoying luxuries and conveniences of technological progress and medical care, are "normals". We don't really know how we get all this, or how we are having all this, we just take for granted and enjoy it.
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