A Traumatic Study Of Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro is a contemporary outstanding Japanese British writer. His works have received many awards, as well as drawing the critics’ attention all over the world. Many of his works contain the trauma element, which manifests his great concern on the vulnerable groups. The novel Never Let Me Go is a typical example. Throughout the studies on the novel, the critics abroad and at home mainly focus on genre studies, psychoanalysis, narratology and ethical literary to explore this work, but the analyses of trauma in it are rare. Therefore, this thesis will interpret the tragedy of the clones and the guardians in the novel, from the view of psychological trauma.Based on trauma theory, the thesis is mainly from the individual trauma, the collective trauma, and the causes and treatments of trauma to analyze the trauma in the novel. The thesis firstly discusses the trauma of the narrator Kathy, and explores the traumatic effects on the individual, through the analysis of the traumatic events in her memory and to be faced. Then it interprets the collective trauma of the clones and the guardians in traumatic events. After the analysis, it is found that the causes of trauma mainly include the unreasonable use of science and technology and the deficiency of social power mechanism. According to their situation, the individual can tell the traumatic story and the collective can adjust themselves to treat their trauma. However, due to the characters’ own limitation and the restriction of the social environment at that time, their recovery is not completed, which needs the follow-up treatment.With the above analysis, a conclusion is finally drawn: Ishiguro’s work Never Let Me Go not only guides reader to learn a tragic story about clones, but also helps them totally understand the psychological trauma from the traumatic symptoms, the causes of trauma and the stages of recovery. The clones’ and the guardians’ trauma has not been cured completely. This is not only the unsolved problem that Ishiguro has been working to solve, but also the problem that is failed to be settled by human beings. With the rapid development of science and technology, people become more numb and indifferent. By this work, Ishiguro tries to attract social concerns for the traumatized population and arouse public sympathy for the vulnerable groups.