Never Let Me Go Comparative Essay

Compare the contexts of Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go”, Hardy’s “Far From the Madding Crowd” and the poems of U.A Fanthorpe

The contextual background to these works set a framework for the themes and ideas to be revealed. Learning about the reflection of the authors’ own individuality in their work helps us understand characters and plots more easily. Also, the external influences (both societal and from relationships) elucidate the aims of the authors’. “Far From the Madding Crowd” was written in a time of significant change in Hardy’s life and the theme of change surrounds the entire novel, it exists on a small and large scale. Likewise, “Never Let Me Go” explores the change in the development of the human psyche and the mental changes
Both of their novels were written in terms of scientific and societal shift. “Far from the madding crowd” was written 15 years after the publication of Darwin’s “Origin of species”, this new scientific Weltanschauung coupled with the industrial revolution occurring in Britain meant Britain was in a state of rapid transition, particularly the displacement of people from the countryside into busy cities. Dale Kramer commented on “the folklore of Wessex that resisted the importunities of modern existence”i, this raises the notion of Hardy’s idealisation of the Wessex countryside and therefore his resentment of the crowded cities. Likewise Ishiguro’s 2005 novel is set in a dystopian recent past where scientific development has been prioritised over morality. The death of the first cloned sheep “Dolly” two years prior to the novel’s publication may have had some influence in its conceptualisation. Having been born in Nagasaki, Japan (site of a nuclear bomb attack) he would also be frighteningly aware of the repercussions of scientific development. Similarly, U.A Fanthorpe’s hospital poetry explores the dehumanisation of her patients in a late 70s Bristolian hospital, a depressing time in Britain (winter of
Rosemarie Morgan comments that “Hardy’s rustics invoke the biblical texts”ii , “Cainy Ball’s ‘Genesis’ story, for example, touches subtly on what will later become an aspect of Hardy’s iconoclasm”. Hardy therefore uses aspects of the novel to portray a certain religious satire. On the very first page of the novel Hardy writes about Gabriel, saying “he went to church, but yawned privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene creed”. However, at the same time Hardy also portrays Oak as a shepherd (biblical method for overseer and caretaker) and the novel is packed with Hellenic references. Perhaps this combination of positive and negative associations with God and religion reflects Hardy’s self-confessed agnosticism. Religion in “Never Let Me Go” is noteworthy because of its distinct absence from the novel. The lack of religion in the novel emphasises the idea of the clones being overlooked and it highlights the dangers of this scientific, apathetic dystopia. This could reflect the personal opinions of the author that without religion there is no morality. In Fanthorpe’s “After visiting hours” she uses religious imagery in relation her way into light”, “blessed for her