Clones and Souls

Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro

Throughout this novel, a major question that the characters explore is whether or not clones have souls. Through the end of the novel, the reader finds evidence both for and against the argument that clones have souls. Kathy's narration displays her experiences and emotions that she feels from each event. Kathy wants a meaningful relationship in her life, and she secretly longs to be with Tommy.This longing desire for love helps support the argument that clones have souls because the main characteristic of having a soul is emotion. In addition, Kathy also feels anger towards Ruth at various times in the novel but especially when Ruth finally admitted that she had kept Tommy and Kathy from each other. Despite these displays of emotion, Kathy also shows moments where she appears to be without a soul. For example when Kathy and Tommy are told that deferrals do not exist, neither Tommy nor Kathy rebel against the system that has so crudely trapped them to the fate of donating their organs. This passive acceptance and conformity to a crude system suggests that the clones are merely clones without the ability to reason and judge the morality of their own situation.

Do these bananas have souls?

In today's world, the Catholic Church opposes all forms of clones because clones are not formed by God. God is traditionally associated with creating souls, so because clones are not created by God then how would they be able to have souls? With this reasoning, clones would have less of a soul than a banana. In the novel, most all of the human characters do not believe that the clones have souls, or at least they are disgusted by the clones. "Do you think she'd have talked to us like that if she'd known what we really were?... She'd have thrown us out" (Ishiguro, 166). Even Madame and Miss Emily, who established Hailsham in an attempt to prove that clones had souls, didn't see the clones as humans. "You poor creatures" (Ishiguro, 272). With so many people opposed to the idea that the clones have souls, how could Kathy and her peers ever expect to live a life more meaningful than one destined for a donor?

By ending the novel with Kathy still becoming a donor, Ishiguro causes the reader to question the morality of cloning and by extension, other  similar works of science. The reader feels sympathy for Kathy because she did show signs of having a soul. However, ending the novel with Kathy still viewed as a soulless individual causes the reader to question further if cloning should take place in our world. As expressed in the novel, once cloning begins, it cannot be stopped. "How can you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable, how can you ask such a world to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days? There was no going back" (Ishiguro, 263). After seeing the conflicts in this novel, the reader questions if cloning would cause more problems than benefits, and most people would not want to deal with this sort of conflict.