Sex, clones, and Judy Bridgewater.
This book is so beautifully disturbing on a number of levels.
First, though, let me make it clear that the subject of cloning doesn't usually cross my mind. What I do know about it is that there is this whole moral debate on how it, cloning, is like playing God with rusty instruments and theory.
But now that I have read "Never Let Me Go," I see, in blinding colors, how sad and scary this world might turn out to be.
These aspects are magnified by the idea, presented in the novel, that if cloning becomes a successfully carried out process, there is the danger that this power will allow us to take away the human element from these beings. They would be seen as a array of spare parts to be used by sickly humans, not as regular people functioning in mainstream society, as presented in the novel.
And the ironic thing, of course, is that these clones (as I would imagine they would be like in the real world) are engineered from humans, made by humans, and, essentially, are human, in form, composition, and in feeling. They feel, they think, they cry. They love and make love.
Basically, my point is that, as far-fetched and fantastical as the subject seems now--we can't even clone a sheep without it dying quite suddenly--it still brings up some pertinent questions and issues to think of for the future, and even for the present. Wouldn't these beings still be human, not only in form, but in mind and spirit, no matter how they are brought to life? Might this system of cloning also affect how regular people treat each other, since we become so reparable, so replaceable? With the help of these clones, we would be like machines, being opened and sowed up every time something fails in our own bodies. The clone would already be treated as machinery--a mechanical body filled with spare goodies for others to have welded into their own bodies. Who says that it ends there?
On another, more literary note, I notice that in the novel as the lives of Cathy, Tommy, and Ruth progresses, they become shadowed by the fact that they will soon cease to exist as they have before, which isn't much different from how regular humans live--going to school, maintaining sexual and romantic relationships as well as friendships, playing around with friends and having fun, and artistic activities such as listening to music and painting. In this sense, I feel that there is such a strong connection between this narrative presented in "Never Let Me Go" and Keats' odes, especially "Ode to a Nightingale," because each of the narrators is always conscious of his or her mortality, and of those around him or her.
In addition, Cathy and her peers share a sense of wonder and awe of the human race, much like that in which Keats shows for his nightingale and the beauty of nature which he describes in such detail. These clones are always wondering about the mainstream world, wanting to live in it and wondering about what it would be like to see the persons who they were modeled in the image of--their possibles.
In terms of art and aesthetics, these clones idolize human icons and celebrities that are presented in pictures and in music. An example of this is Cathy's idolization of Judy Bridgewater's picture, where the songstress is standing with a glamorous dress, smoking a cigarette, and flirting with the men around her. Cathy does place herself within that world, creating a virtual agent to inhabit this imagined world of carefree glamour, to use Steen's words. The Bridgewater song, "Never Let Me Go," also, as an art form of its own, transports Cathy into another world, a world where a mother is holding her child and never letting go because it is so precious. She places herself into that role as well. When listening to the song, she holds a bundle in her arms, pretending to be that mother. Again, she creates a virtual agent here as well to inhabit this world of nurturing.