Kazuo Ishiguro's Reflection On Technoethics In Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro(1954-)is a distinguished British-Japanese novelist who has won the Booker Prize in 1989 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017.Narrated in retrospection,Never Let Me Go(2015)pictures the tragic life of the clones who are created and sacrificed as organ donors in a science world with highly developed biotechnology.This thesis reveals Ishiguro's concerns about the plight of the clones in Never Let Me Go and his reflection on the blind worship of instrumental rationality from the technoethical perspective.Ethics deals with problems of human morality by defining concepts such as right and wrong,good and evil,virtue and vice,justice and crime.Technoethics is a sub-field of ethics addressing the ethical issues emerging in the Technology Age.It focuses on the ethical use of technology and the misuse of technology.Concerned with ethical plights,technoethics addresses cloning technology as one of its primary concerns.The main part of this thesis is divided into three chapters.The first part shows the tragic plight of the clones in Never Let Me Go from three aspects: the infringement of right to freedom,emotional estrangement and the loss of identity,and exposes the ethical anomie of organ transplantation under human cloning technology.In the second part,this thesis reveals Ishiguro's sympathy for the clones through his narrative structure.The author uses the clones' first-person perspective to narrow the distance between the reader and the protagonist.With the help of dual narrative,the clones' happy childhood and adolescence are vividly contracted with their despair after knowing their doomed end.Flashbacks portray the oppressive living environment of the clones.In the third part,this thesis analyses Ishiguro's criticism on instrumental rationality.Human cloning technology symbolizes instrumental rationality,and Hailsham represents value rationality.Blind worship of instrumental rationality transforms humans into one-dimensional beings whose purpose are purely utilitarian.The closure of Hailsham conveys Ishiguro's pessimism to arouse people's moral consciences.