To what extent is institutional conditioning and manipulation significant in the texts ‘Never Let Me Go’ and ‘Brave New World’?
My thoughts:
I think your title is nice and specific. You have chosen two texts related by genre and I can see how you would easily lend yourself to Marxism within the essay (although this isn’t necessarily a requirement in this essay). I have just emailed the moderator and will let you know as soon as I have a response.
This book is about the quest of shepherd boy (Santiago) from Spain who embarks on a journey to discover his destiny which leads him through Tangier to the Egyptian pyramids following the ‘omens’ which he meets throughout his journey. Santiago meets a range of people from a gypsy woman who he promises 10% of his earnings, a mysterious rich king who he exchanges his sheep for in return for Urrim and Thummin, a glass shop owner who he works for briefly, an Englishman prepared to embark on his own journey of discovering the final secrets of Alchemy and a girl he meets at the oasis named Fatima to which he falls deeply in love with, and finally the alchemist who helps him discover his true destiny in the desert.
This text relates to Marxism in the sense that Santiago is merely a shepherd who has fallen in love with a girl in his hometown whose father owns a shop that Santiago visits twice a year to sell wool to. However, because Santiago is merely a shepherd he obtains a significantly lower social ranking in his hometown as opposed to the baker who the rich highlights upon their encounter informing Santiago that although they rely on the wool from his sheep they are above him and the baker would be most likely to receive the blessing from the shop owner. In this, the shepherds represent the proletariat to who the bourgeois rely gravely on.
The most recent book I have read is Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Never Let Me Go’.
~ This book relates to Marxism in the sense that students at Hailsham are supposedly sheltered from the outside world and are not on the same ‘level’ as them in the sense that their only purpose in life is to provide them with organ donations. The story is told retrospectively by a 31 year old carer Kathy H. set in England as she informs us that students at Hailsham were clones with the sole purpose to serve the outside world. There are references to donors ‘completing’ rendering them then useless to society. The students, being clones may suggest that they have no real identity to higher classes, theoretically they’re all the same, so these students may perhaps be representing the proletariat.
To further support this, Kathy H., asks the guardians, after Hailsham was closed down the relevance of all their studying when their fates were already predetermined, considering they would all end up becoming donors even if they tried break free from conventionality. the response received was ‘ it might look as though you were pawns in a game…..you have to accept that that’s how things happen in this world’ – ‘But think of it. You were better off than many who came before you.’ the symbolism in this text may be that the guardians represent the middle class, merely appeasing the working class however not allowing them total freedom.
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