Never Let Me Go 6: Characterization

"Tommy thought it possible the guardians had, throughout all our years at Hailsham, timed very carefully and deliberately everything they told us, so that we were always just too young to understand properly the latest piece of information." pg. 82

Once I learned the real situation that these students at Hailsham were in, I understood better the outlook and perspective that Kathy has on her life. Although to someone like me, it seems tragic to not be able to have children if you want them, she has been taught from a young age that it is not in her destiny. She developed an opinion on this fact when she was young and she hasn't thought enough about it to change it. Like Miss Lucy told the students, they had been "told and not told."

Even though the students were informed of their destiny to become donors, their futures of a short life without children, they were told about it too early for them to properly understand the concept. At the early age which they were told, they couldn't fathom the seriousness of the idea. But, by the time they were older, it had just become something they were used to, and they didn't thing twice about it.

So, even though to someone like me, discovering that I was infertile or incapable of having children would be devastating, Kathy has already come to terms with the idea, or at least developed a perspective on it. Knowing the Kathy has been somewhat misled as to the realness of her future as a donor, it is easier for me, the reader, to see why she takes it so lightly.