A – English A Language & Literature Extended Essay (EE) – May 2022

How does Kazuo Ishiguro use Kathy H.’s emotions to explore the limits of empathy in Never Let Me Go?

An investigation of empathy with specific reference to Kazuo Ishiguro’s use of emotions in Never Let Me Go

Introduction

Set in an alternate dystopian England in the 1990s amid modern civilization, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro recounts the coming-of-age of the protagonist Kathy H. through a character-driven narrative. Raised and educated in a boarding school called Hailsham, clones like Kathy are destined to donate their organs for the normals, the non-cloned humans, to treat human diseases. Throughout this journey of self-development over the course of her adolescence, Kathy’s expression of overwhelming emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, and love allows her to solidify her place and purpose as a clone.

Empathy is defined as “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another” without being exposed to the same past or present (“Empathy”). In contemporary literature, the notion of empathy is often regarded as “emotional sharing” (Nilsson). Further, in postmodernism, it is argued that “what we imagine to be individual and specific—impulses, attitudes, emotions, and feelings—in fact have a social […] and shared dimension,” relating to the sense of empathizing (Smith 423). While Never Let Me Go, written in 2005, is a novel from the postmodern period, its incorporation of a wide scale of emotions within Kathy’s inner self raises an objection to this general understanding of the close relationship between emotions and empathy. A question is then elicited: How does Kazuo Ishiguro use Kathy H.’s emotions to explore the limits of empathy in Never Let Me Go?