Never Let Me Go

When I was reading Never Let Me Go, I felt a couple different things. First, I felt very sad for these poor children; they were being raised for the sole purpose of having their organs harvested! They were never really fully aware of this (they had hints from the guardians and hunches amongst themselves) and so they were excitedly making plans for their futures, as any normal adolescent would do. This feeling was brought up when the boys were talking before their game, waiting for the rain to stop. The fact they wanted to be movie stars and move to America made me sad because I knew this would never happen for them. I think this is part of the reason it made me so sad, but also because they are so young and innocent. They did not do anything to deserve what was coming to them. They were normal children like you and I with dreams and ambitions. What is important here? Well, I think the fact that the author can produce such sadness in me is important. It is important because he succeeded in making me feel empathy for his characters, which we have learned is one of the things that make a good story.
I also felt outraged, appalled and disgusted that human beings could do this to other humans. This feeling was brought up at various stages in the book as the readers are slowly gathering clues and putting them together to figure out what was going on with these children in Hailsham. I know that humans are very cruel to each other (murder, rape, kidnapping, robbery), but this is like taking murder to a new level. People are making these children with the intent to use their bodies and let them die when they are middle-aged, and this makes me so angry that people can be so selfish. I think the reason this is scary to me is because it almost doesn’t seem that far-fetched. Scientists are working on cloning, and we already have donations in hospitals, so it doesn’t seem that unlikely to put these two ideas together. This feeling of disgust is important because I think it means he is getting his message across. Because I feel this anger towards the people/scientists and sorrow for these children, it has made me think about the situation and now I am more likely to do something about it if anything like this should occur in our world.