As humans, all we every really want is to be a part of something. We each have a desire to be involved with some sort of group because groups give us a sense of connection. Connection fills an emotional gap; it replaces loneliness and allows people to feel like they belong. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go groups and cliques are one of the central things that divide and define the characters. Many cliques come about intentionally, one person chooses who is acceptable for the group and who is not, however this is not always the case. Sometimes people are members of a group because they were born into it or because they live in a specific place or have a specific job. The cliques found within Never Let Me Go encompass both of these. There are the broad groups, the clones and the humans, but within these groups there are much smaller ones. There are the carers and the donors, the children and the adults, the students of Hailsham and the students who went to other, more cruel, places.
Ultimately when one is involved with a group of people they have a level of certain level of loyalty to the group. People are not inclined to turn against the place where they belong and the people that they get along with. The protagonist of Never Let Me Go, Kathy, shows her loyalty to the students of Hailsham within the first few pages of the book when she states that “I’m a Hailsham student—which is enough by itself sometimes to get people’s backs up. Kathy H., they say, she gets to pick and chooses her own kind: people from Hailsham, or one of the other privileged estates” (Ishiguro 4). Kathy says that she is making her job as a carer easier in choosing donors that she can relate to and feel for. She is loyal to the group that she belongs to because it brings her comfort while she does her incredibly depressing job of taking care of donors. The students of Hailsham also had cliques in their childhood, like Ruth’s secret guard. Only Ruth could choose the people who were in the secret guard, it was a group that she was in entire control of Kathy addresses this when she recalls “I was never sure in Ruth actually invented the secret guard herself, but there was no doubt she was the leader. There were between six and ten of us, the figure changing whenever Ruth allowed a new member or expelled someone” (Ishiguro 49).
The groups and cliques found within Never Let Me Go essentially serve two purposes. They are proof of the fact that the clones are separate from humans. The students do not realize it at first but they are not normal humans, they were raised for a different and horrific purpose. The clones are not considered normal people, and yet they still have human characteristics. The clones share a common human desire to belong. They group together, divide themselves, and create places and find people that make them feel comfortable. Ultimately, this adds to the tragedy of the story, because it helps the reader understand that the donors, the people who are having their organs harvested while they are still alive, are human beings just like the rest of us. The cliques in the story are a way that the author proves how similar the clones are. The separation between clones and humans is not strong, the clones come from humans and consequently are beings that we can understand, relate to and have sympathy for.
