Culture/Society

    In the end of Never Let Me Go, Kathy and Tommy learn from Madame and Miss Emily that there is no way for them escape their duties as clones, they have no choice but to accept the roles that were placed onto them by society. Their bleak lives in adulthood makes them yearn for their past lives in Hailsham, when things were simpler and innocent. Ishiguro showed us a world that is not much different from our own. I think that this is a reflection on our society and how as we grow older we learn that we must do certain things, not because we want to but because it is expected of us as adults. We have rules and standards implemented on us as adults, which makes us look back when things were easier and when society didn’t expect much from us. Hailsham was the only place of comfort they ever had before facing the harsh reality of their futures as being donors and carers and it disappeared, but still stays in their memories. Kathy realizes the importance of holding onto those memories of her childhood because those memories are the only things that connects her to Hailsham and everyone she lost. 

Compare/Contrast

     While reading Never Let Me Go, I found some similarities between this novel and Midnight’s Children, specifically the narrative styles. Kathy recounts her time in Hailsham and the Cottage, but her stories are often incomplete as she jumps from one memory to the next. Like in Midnight’s Children, Kathy’s narration shows that her memories are disjointed, and her stories are often incomplete, yet she holds on to and finds comfort in them. This also makes her narration unreliable. The first person narrative point of view only gives us access to Kathy’s perspective on Tommy, Ruth, and the other people around her which limits us from knowing the motives and thoughts of the other characters. The idea of memory loss and the telling of a story through a first-person narration makes both novels very similar in terms of their narrative styles.

    “I will embroider around each one of the with red feather-stitching, to blend them in as a part of the pattern. And so we will all be together.”

   These closing sentences of the novel reflects on the importance of solidarity with the women in Grace’s life. She was constantly surrounded by men who mentally and physically abused her, so she cherished her relationships with the few women she had in her life. She honored Mary and Nancy by sewing pieces of cloth that were left behind by them into her quilt. Although Nancy and Grace weren’t exactly friends, Grace still included her, and I think this represents how important she still was to her despite their differences. It shows how vital it is for the oppressed to stick together in order to free themselves from being under the control of their oppressors and I think this quilt symbolizes this idea.

Theme  

   The importance of storytelling is a major theme in Alias Grace. Grace maintains her power by withholding information in her conversations with Dr. Jordan as a way to communicate her experiences in her best interest. This is the only power she has in this situation because they rely on her detailed account of what happened with Nancy and Mr. Kinnear. During this time, women were more vulnerable to having their stories skewed because of men altering the details to their own interests. This emphasizes the importance of her taking control of the narrative and what information needed to be said to Dr. Jordan.  Through her speech and mannerisms, she represents herself as someone who is stable and innocent, but it also raises question of the reliability of her narration. 

Theme

    An important symbol I’ve noticed so far is the association of flowers with Grace and Mary, so this could be seen as a symbol of their friendship. The flower imagery occurs throughout the story, specifically red flowers which made me think that it could also be associated with death. This symbol is introduced in the very first page of the novel and it becomes a recurrence. On page 197, Grace goes to Mary’s coffin to put flowers on her grave and says “…there were long-stemmed roses and peonies; and we chose only the white ones. I scattered the petals of them over her as well, and I slipped in the needle-case I’d made for her, but out of sight, as it might look wrong otherwise, being red…”. This symbol come backs in the form of the handkerchief that Mary gave her that is “…a white ground printed with blue flowers…” (p. 204.) The red flower imagery comes back on page 242 when Grace is telling Dr. Jordan about her dream of red flowers. This symbol is obviously important since it occurs throughout the novel so far and I wonder just how significant it is to this story all together.

Snakes are used as a symbol of good and evil in this novel. Although snakes are largely known for representing evil, they served good purposes throughout the story. Rushdie challenged this notion of snakes being evil by using them to save Saleem. Earlier in the novel, Saleem was ill with typhoid and his life was saved by using snake venom. Later in the story, Saleem loses all his memories, then he gets them back after being bit by a poisonous snake. I wonder why Rushdie decided to flip around the idea of snakes being evil into being good in this narrative? Since throughout this novel, Rushdie alludes to biblical texts, it could be referencing to the serpent that convinced Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit against God’s commands, which then gave them knowledge of good and evil. This could be interpreted as good acts being disguised as evil, in this case the snakes served good deeds but is still represented as being evil.

     Theme

     While reading this first section of Midnight’s Children, I noticed a certain reoccurring symbol in the text and the theme of major historical events connecting in the family’s lives. When Aadam had to examine Naseem’s body because of her illnesses, he had to do so through a perforated sheet. He slowly began to fall in love with her by seeing just glimpses of her, then when she complained of a headache, he was finally able to see her face which coincided with the day the World War ended. The perforated sheet symbol comes back again when Amina, who is in an unhappy marriage, attempts to fall in love with her husband by viewing just fragments of him. This seemed like a reversed version of what happened with Aadam and Naseem because they fell in love by viewing just glimpses of each other, then they found that they were unhappy with their marriage while Amina and Ahmed were unhappy together to begin with, so she had to fall in love with him in pieces “…to do this she divided him, mentally, into every single one of his component parts, physical as well as behavioral…” (p. 73). Amina attempted to fall in love with him by viewing just fragments of his personality instead of loving the entirety of him.   

     In this essay, Rushdie discusses how memories and identities can become fragmented and lost through cultural displacement.  He describes how being an immigrant makes him feel as if he is alienated from his native country when he says “…our physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost.” He describes his own memories of his past life in Bombay being fractured through dislocation, yet he still remembers the more trivial, yet profound aspects of his past. Rushdie explains that this theme of fragmented memories and identity is reflected through the character Saleem in Midnight’s Children. This made me wonder if this is a common theme in his works since his other novel, The Satanic Verses, deals with a similar concept. He poses the question on how Indian writers in British society can preserve their native identities while also embracing Western traditions to which he responds that they “have access to a second tradition”. I liked this idea on how immigrants can find common ground from their experiences and use this sense of displacement through their writings.  

     In the Demon Lover and The Happy Autumn Fields, we see how war afflicted Mrs. Drover and Mary’s mental health. The Demon Lover reads more like a traditional ghost story with Mrs. Drover being haunted by a supernatural force, which is the spirit of her ex-lover who had died in the war. The Happy Autumn Fields deals with the psychological effects Mary experienced by living in a war-torn area. Mary experiences hallucinatory visions of a life she has not lived herself, yet she holds those memories as if they are her own. Mrs. Drover goes through a more dramatized ghost experience in the setting of an abandoned, torn house, which puts her in a state of hysteria. Both stories deal with the trauma of war and the ghosts that are left behind as a result.

     The struggles with dealing with mental illness is a major theme explored in Mrs. Dalloway. The narrative style of this story gives us an idea on how the general anxieties of living in this post-war society affected Clarissa and Septimus by reading into their thoughts. Although Clarissa enjoys her high position in society and lives by those class standards, she still feels empty and isolated despite her privileges. The only thing that really brings her joy anymore are the parties she would organize, but even then, she’d still get completely overwhelmed by them. Septimus is a lower-class man who has been suffering from PTSD since after the war, so his mental illness is more noticeable to others because of his unconventional behaviors in public that are shown throughout the story. This causes him to be judged more harshly by his wife and strangers whereas Clarissa is not judged as much because she keeps her thoughts to herself and doesn’t show much signs of depression. Despite their differences in regard to social class, they both suffered from depression in different ways, this shows how much of a problem it was especially during this time when mental illness wasn’t taken so seriously and the various levels of depression were not yet explored.