This novel purports to be set in England in the 1990’s. However, there are clues that this is not quite what it seems. Identify these clues.
There are a few clues in the novel that the world in which this text is set is not quite the same as the world we are used to. These are just a few:
- Rather than introducing herself with her full name or just her first name, the narrator introduces herself with her first name and the first letter of her surname, Kathy H. This tells us straight away in the very first line of the text that there is something odd about the world of the text.
- Kathy’s occupation is also a little strange. She simply describes herself as a “carer”. She is looking after donors, some of whom have been known to donate up to four times. At the start of the novel it is unclear what exactly they are donating (we later learn that it is their vital internal organs), but four donations of any kind is a large number. Not only this, but she also says:
“But these days, of course, there are fewer and fewer donors left who I remember, and so in practice, I haven’t been choosing that much.”
This suggests that the donors are dying due to the donations they have made.
- Kathy states that she has been in the profession for eleven years, and regards this as a long time to be working as a carer. However, in most jobs in the world that we are used to eleven years would be considered as a standard, if not a short time to be working at that job.
- When describing her time as a Hailsham student, the narrator mentions her “guardians”. This strikes us as odd, as in normal circumstances they would be called teachers or tutors. Other than this, however, Hailsham seems to be a relatively normal place in the first chapter, certainly compared to the rest of the world described so far by Kathy.
- One of the men in her care repeatedly asks her to describe her memories of Hailsham, so that he might be able to know it so well that he feels like they are his own memories. This suggests that the world outside of Hailsham was not so desirable. However, the strangest part of the text’s description of the man is that rather than saying that he was dying, it says that he was “close to completing”.
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