The Invisible And Inescapable Panopticon In Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro,the 2017 Nobel Prize recipient,is one of the most prominent writers in contemporary English literature.His writings are full of global awareness,crossing nationalities,regions,and races.In his only science fiction Never Let Me Go,Ishiguro narrates from the perspective of Kathy about the growth and death of a group of clones in a human dominated society.With the employment of Michel Foucault‘s Panopticon Theory,this thesis intends to reveal and discuss the inescapable Panopticon in society and how it restricts clones from freedom and controls their fate,which might provide an alternative to the understanding of the novel.Three dimensions of Panopticon are analyzed,namely Hailsham as enclosed Panopticon,Cottages and society as open Panopticon,and belief as internalized Panopticon.Firstly,the disciplinary power perfects its functioning through the enclosed institution of Hailsham and its special education,imposing on students a sense of being surveilled.Secondly,though given partial freedom,they are still restricted by the disciplinary power from the isolated environment,the feeling o f otherness and the failure of finding identity.Thirdly,excluded by human society,clones could only gain the meaning of life from the warm memory of Hailsham and the values implanted by Guardians.Consequently,they accept their identity and take initiative to sacrifice themselves.This belief finally internalizes into the inescapable Panopticon.By discussing clones‘ inescapability from the perspective of Foucault‘s Panopticon Theory,this thesis argues that clones are living in an invisible Panopticon and eventually their belief and duty turn the external prison into the internal mind confinement.Furthermore,the inescapability of clones in this science fiction could remind us of the common situation of human in modern disciplinary society,where we are unconsciously restricted as well.