Neverletmego

Chapters 1-3
Summary
Never Let Me Go takes place in a dystopian United Kingdom, where disease has been eradicated. This apparent blessing has been accomplished by breeding human clones, who are forced to donate their vital organs when they reach early adulthood. Kathy H., a thirty-one-year-old clone who will soon make her first donation, narrates the novel.
Kathy is a “carer”: she acts as anurse and a companion to clones that have started the donation process. She is proud of her skill as a carer, and her superiors seem to have recognized her success, as she is allowed to choose the donors she cares for, a special privilege. She often chooses to work with students from Hailsham, the boarding school she attended in her youth. It is implied that Hailsham was a very special school, andmost clones did not have happy childhoods, as Kathy did.
Kathy often reminisces about her time at Hailsham. As a child, she mostly played with other girls, especially Ruth, her best friend and occasional rival. She recalls watching from the sports pavilion as one boy, Tommy, was bullied by his friends. The other girls laughed when Tommy threw a tantrum, but young Kathy was concerned that he wouldget mud on his favorite shirt. She tried to interfere with his tantrum but Tommy accidentally hit her in the face. He felt guilty immediately, and Kathy did not hold the incident against him.
A few days later, Tommy apologized to Kathy on their way to a medical check-up. Kathy was slightly embarrassed by his awkward behavior and the public setting of his apology, but she began to pay moreattention to him. Because of his awkwardness, his short temper, and his bad work in art class, all of his peers reject Tommy, and they often play cruel pranks on him. Kathy is upset by this mean treatment, but Ruth believes he deserves it, since if he controlled his temper the bullies would lose interest.
Kathy digresses briefly, explaining that she pulled strings early in her career so that she couldbe Ruth’s carer. Although the two women had a tumultuous relationship in their youth, they enjoyed reminiscing about Hailsham together as Ruth recovered from her donations.
Kathy can trace Tommy’s status as a pariah to a single incident in art class when they were children. At Hailsham, art was an important part of student culture, and a person’s social status was often tied to the quality oftheir “creations.” One day, Tommy purposely painted a bad picture as a joke. The kind teacher, Miss Geraldine, did not understand that it was in jest and took Tommy’s effort seriously, resulting in an awkward moment that highlighted Tommy’s actual lack of art talent.
Eventually, Tommy stopped throwing tantrums and the other students stopped bullying him. Kathy asked him how he managed to turn thingsaround for himself. It turned out that Tommy had a long talk with Miss Lucy, a brusque but honest guardian. She had told him that it was all right if he wasn’t creative. Kathy was shocked to hear this, and initially did not believe Tommy. When he recounted the conversation in more detail, he added that Miss Lucy seemed angry, and had mentioned that the students weren’t taught as much as theyshould be about donations. Kathy and Tommy were puzzled by this, since there was no apparent relationship between Tommy’s creativity and the donations.
At Hailsham, a mysterious woman known as Madame took the students’ best artwork to a place off-campus called the Gallery. The students were never allowed off campus, so they were not sure that the Gallery even exists, but it became a point of pride tohave one’s work taken there. One time when Kathy was eight, the students swarmed around Madame to test their suspicions that she was afraid of them. She became very stiff and uncomfortable, and the incident hurt the students’ feelings.

Chapters 4-6
Summary
Kathy explains that she looks forward to becoming a donor because the process will give her time to relax and think over the events of...