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Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl
Tonight is the first chance I've had to respond to your questions. Memory is Ishiguro's big subject matter that is prevalent in his works. <SNIP> His earlier works were elderly narrators looking back on their lives with a self-deception and regret about what led them to where they are (unreliable narrators).
<SNIP>
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My wife read this with me because she had really enjoyed the film, and wanted to be able to talk about the book with me. She felt like she was listening to an old woman telling stories in a nursing home. Which, when you think about Kathy's lifespan, is basically what she is. Close to death with nothing left but her memories.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
One of the difficulties that first person narration presents to a writer is that a participant in the story cannot be omniscient. They only see what they can see, or what someone else chooses to tell them. This limits how much the writer can tell the reader, because it has to be something the first person narrator can conceivably know or be told. In the case of clones I fully expect there are details that no one from the outside world will tell them, so Kathy's knowledge is inherently limited and quite probably incomplete and/or unreliable.
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I think Kathy might also seem unreliable because we are having to see from her perspective as someone with hardly any contact with the outside world. Her perceptions, emotions, and judgment are limited by the very few other children/young adults she met, all of whom were basically marching onward to their noble deaths. She knows nothing beyond the role of carer or donor.
I also find it interesting that they are taught to refer to death as "completion." It's sort of a fun-house mirror version of the heroic quest. Their purpose is literally completed by their death.