| dc.description.abstract | This thesis is an exploration of the clones in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and, most importantly, their proposed humanness. The first part of the thesis establishes the genre of science fiction and its history, dystopias, and posthumanism. After this follows, an exploration of the novel’s science fiction elements and its critical reception. The main part of the thesis consists of an analysis of the novel. It is built around three key themes: the clones’ status as subhuman in their own fictional world, whether their passivity makes it impossible to consider them truly human, and finally, how the reader is invited to consider the clones as human through empathic sentiment and identification. The thesis concludes that, though categories of the human are exclusionary by nature, the clones must be considered human. Neither their inability to oppose their fate nor the fact that they were created in a lab mean that they should be labelled differently. The narrative’s creation of empathy ultimately plays a large role in truly cementing the clones’ humanity. | nob |