Kazuo Ishiguro: 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature

I guess you all know by now that British writer Kazuo Ishiguro has been awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature...






Here's a link to the official announcement:

2017 Nobel Prize for Literature

Have you read anything by him? Or seen any of the films that are based on his novels, The Remains of the Day (1989 / 1993) and Never Let Me Go (2005 / 2010)?

  

I am a great admirer of his work, but, in particular, of Never Let Me Go. I was fascinated by this novel when I read it. Some readers of this novel fail to see the point of this science fiction work. But I know the science fiction elements just make it the perfect parable for our times.

Maybe because, as a child, I was a fan of Enid Blyton's boarding school series, like Malory Towers and St. Clare's, I took very passionately to Ishiguro's boarding school novel. 

   

Ishiguro takes the British boarding school setting and radically alters it.




In the collective imaginary the British boarding school is an institution meant for the upper classes. However, in his novel, it becomes a "farm" where clones of human beings are raised so that the rich and "purely" human can have replacements for their defective organs. Nonetheless, Ishiguro's boarding school for clones keeps up the facade: kids have to follow strict rules; generally speaking, teachers show little sympathy for them; classes are rigorous; a strong work ethic is firmly adhered to by both the students and the teachers; sports are considered a key educational tool; friendships among the students develop, though rivalries and jealousies mar more than one relationship. 

That art and humanities play only a minor role in the kids' schooling should clearly warn us, readers, that Ishiguro's students are not supposed to grow to become full human beings, that they are not even believed to be capable of raising to human being level. But they know nothing of their "defective" humanity...

Tommy's art

I couldn't help thinking that, in the West, children from the middle and upper classes go to music and art classes, usually after school, as their parents can afford paying for them. Children from the lower classes, on the contrary, don't have access to those classes, and the public system, at least in Spain, absolutely fails to provide decent musical and artistic education. It's as if we had agreed that someone who is going to become a construction worker, or a hairdresser, or a janitor, or a housekeeper... has no need for art. Subhumans have no need for art...

Access to health coverage also depends on you class. The rich have much better access to medical treatment than the lower classes. In Western societies, some people buy organs from humans from developing countries. In Western societies, some people "hire" women from developing countries to bear children for the First World. We don't call those who sell their bodies "clones", but we treat them as if they were subhuman. And subhumans have little need for medical care. Or so it seems.

One more thing cut deeply into my heart while I was reading Ishiguro's novel. It has to do with caring.

As I've said before, in the novel the clones spend their childhood and adolescence in boarding schools. When they become adults, their time to work begins. Those who haven't started being operated on look after those whose health is declining because some of their organs have already been taken. For a while, the healthy clones become carers of their frail peers. But there comes the day when even the carers' bodies have to be harvested upon. And then new generations of clones will have to care for them.

There is an obvious way of reading this decline in the clones' lives that, as shown above, implies a criticism of the British and Western class and racial system: some people, the novel suggests, are born to be harvested upon, while others are born to reap the benefits of that macabre harvest.

But Ishiguro's science fiction novel --because it is science fiction-- offers more readings than that one. It also lets us ponder about our lives' caring circle: As babies, we are looked after by our parents; as adults, we look after our kids and --some, at least-- after our elders; as elders... we are hopefully looked after by the young.

No matter our class, our race or our age, throughout our lives we desperately seek for recognition of our humanity, like Ishiguro's clones. We desperately seek for decency, individuation, love. And we need a lot of caring. Our survival depends on getting that care.

Some of us are in a position of power that could make it easy for us to prey on others, as if they were nothing but clones, in order to obtain all those things we require. Some of us are in a vulnerable position and can be easily turned into farm commodities, fodder for the beasts.

May we always use our power to care for others who have no such power.

May we always remember that, come old age and illness, we will all be as fragile as Ishiguro's clones.

May we never find ourselves like an old boat hauled up on a deserted beach.

May you never let me go.