Dystopian Concepts In Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro, Japanese-born British novelist, is one of the most celebrated contemporary authors in the English speaking world. He is widely acknowledged as one of the Three Migrant Giants in British literature. His sixth novel Never Let Me Go was nominated for U.S. National Book Critic Circle Award and short-listed for the Booker Prize (2005). Themed on the controversial topic of biotechnology, it is a narration about an abnormal group-clone students, whose daily life and emotional experience are as normal as the human beings. But their "destiny" and "responsibility" are inescapably redesigned:The only purpose of their existence is to provide organs for the human beings.Many critics have made studies on Never Let Me Go about the writing skills and the features of science fiction in it. However, very few have concerned about Ishiguro's dystopian concepts in the novel. This essay tries to interpreter Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go from this new angle, based on the traditional conception of human nature in dystopian literature.This essay consists of five parts. The first part includes a brief introduction to Kazuo Ishiguro and his works, an overview of the novel Never Let Me Go and previous studies on it. Chapter One, based on the development of dystopian literature, makes an analysis on the features of dystopian fiction exemplified in Never Let Me Go. Chapter Two introduces the traditional conception of human nature in dystopian fictions, and analyzes human nature in Never Let Me Go. By giving a detailed analysis of man's dehumanization towards the clones in the novel, it reveals evil in human nature. Chapter Three explores the causes of dehumanization in the novel, and finds that it results from human beings'worship of anthropocentrism, scientism and developmentalism. The final part summarizes Ishiguro's dystopian concepts in the novel Never Let Me Go.This essay insists that the great charm of dystopian fiction is its ability to warn the world. By foreseeing the disasters of the society and the evils of human nature brought by the abuse of science, it awakens people's daydreams of utopia and suggests people to have a rational attitude towards the development of science and technology.