(the prompt is to discuss what you found meaningful about a book you read)
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro was meaningful, because of its ability to move me in a way books typically fail to do. I have always been particularly unsympathetic towards the plights of fictional characters, because of my inability to show empathy towards their problems. However, as I attempted to traverse through the novel's potent ethical questions about the concept of mortality with my typical aloofness, I could not help but find myself identifying with the protagonist, Kathy H, and her thoughts about "completion".
Kathy H is a clone created for the sole purpose of providing her organs in the event that her original human counterpart needs them to prolong her life. Consequentially, clones like Kathy H reach their untimely completion-a euphemism used for death. Although the idea may seem like a blessing, I could not help but be repulsed by the thought that a society so concerned with mortality like our own could one day make this dystopian nightmare a reality. Everyone at one point has contemplated the morbid details of our mortality, and the fear that consumes us when we do is understandable.
However, if fate were to cruelly design my existence as it did to Kathy H, I would willfully resign to its plan like she did. I would not seek a way to evade death like her friends Tommy and Ruth, because in the end everything must come to a "completion". The identification I made with her as I reached the book's conclusion is ultimately what made this so meaningful to me.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro was meaningful, because of its ability to move me in a way books typically fail to do. I have always been particularly unsympathetic towards the plights of fictional characters, because of my inability to show empathy towards their problems. However, as I attempted to traverse through the novel's potent ethical questions about the concept of mortality with my typical aloofness, I could not help but find myself identifying with the protagonist, Kathy H, and her thoughts about "completion".
Kathy H is a clone created for the sole purpose of providing her organs in the event that her original human counterpart needs them to prolong her life. Consequentially, clones like Kathy H reach their untimely completion-a euphemism used for death. Although the idea may seem like a blessing, I could not help but be repulsed by the thought that a society so concerned with mortality like our own could one day make this dystopian nightmare a reality. Everyone at one point has contemplated the morbid details of our mortality, and the fear that consumes us when we do is understandable.
However, if fate were to cruelly design my existence as it did to Kathy H, I would willfully resign to its plan like she did. I would not seek a way to evade death like her friends Tommy and Ruth, because in the end everything must come to a "completion". The identification I made with her as I reached the book's conclusion is ultimately what made this so meaningful to me.
