It's All a (Hail)Sham

In Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, the author foreshadows the end of the novel by giving the readers clues. For example, all of the students go to Hailsham, where they are taken care of and taught to be creative. They learn what to expect out of their lives and are constantly encouraged to create different works of art and poetry. However, Tommy is different than the rest of the students. He doesn’t enjoy creating things and when he is forced to, he often creates things that are very childish and below his potential level of creativity. This causes him to be bullied by the other children, resulting in tantrums. He only stops throwing temper tantrums after a long conversation with Miss Lucy, who is one of the guardians. She is also different from her respected peers because she is more honest with the children, while the other teachers keep up the facade that everything is normal. Miss Lucy tells Tommy that if “he just couldn’t be very creative, then that was quite all right, he wasn’t to worry about it” (Ishiguro 28). Miss Lucy telling Tommy that it isn’t important for him to create foreshadows the fact that the art is unimportant because at the end of the novel, it is revealed that Madame only took it to try and convince outsiders that the clones were worth more than just their parts. Ultimately, this is unsuccessful and Hailsham is shut down. 

Another way that Ishiguro foreshadows the ending is with the actual name of the school. Throughout the novel, all of the clones believe that Hailsham is just their normal school, and there is a deferral program that they can join if they are in love. However, when Kathy and Tommy go to try and get a deferral, Madame tells them that the whole thing was a sham. There is no deferral program, and no real necessity for their creativity. Hailsham was simply created to prove that the clones have souls, however, the efforts of Madame and the teachers were unsuccessful in keeping Hailsham open. They themselves didn’t even believe that the clones were equal to humans, and they refused to touch them. Miss Emily, another one of the teachers, tells Kathy and Tommy, “I’d look down at you from my study window and I’d feel such revulsion” (Ishiguro 269). Despite the fact that the school seemed so nice at the beginning of the novel, there was never any unity between the teachers and the students. They would always be different and even though the teachers tried to get past their discomfort around the clones, it was not successful and the sham of Hailsham was put to rest with its closing.