The Island (Chapter 12/ Pages 138-145)

"Our models were an irrelevance, a technical necessity for bringing us into the world, nothing more than that."

~ Never Let Me Go, page 140

The whole time I've had my theories about what donations are and what the Hailsham students' futures held, I missed one important aspect of everything. The students lived at the school (or institution or whatever else you want to call it) year round and never went to a house with parents, so I wondered whether they were simply born, put up for adoption, and taken to the school or if they even had biological parents. The latter is right. These people were cloned from others so that their organs could be harvested whenever they were needed. The first thing I thought of when ascertaining this was the movie The Island. It's a little bit different (and I'm sure its themes also differ), but it has the same idea.

The movie is about two people who live in a very controlled society where everyone is kept at peak physical condition. A "lottery" selects one member of the community to go to the Island, a fantasy location where they will spend the rest of their life. However, what they don't know is that they aren't people, but clones of wealthy, important figures who live in the real world and pay millions of dollars to insure that they can get any body part whenever they need it. When a clone is selected to go to the Island, he is actually going to be harvested for whatever organ his owner needs. The movie calls into question the morality of genetic engineering and cloning and whether clones have souls and emotions.

An Epiphany Followed by Disappointment and Abandoned Hope (Chapter 12/ Pages 172-185)

" 'Well, I'd rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.' "

~ Brave New World, page 179

I have had some MAJOR revelations in this chapter. It was actually quite exciting - that is, until I realized what those epiphanies entailed.

First: Bernard. I had so many hopes for him in this book - that he would overcome his insecurities and he would expose the horrible nature and ethics of this Society, but then I was naive. I expected this book to have a happy ending, but it probably doesn't, and I guess that's why it is a classic. Bernard gave up his ideas of being bitter and angry and actually showing emotion, the very qualities that made him different from everybody, and overdosed on soma like all the rest of his thoughtless, numb peers. And when John calls him out on using him as a way to achieve false happiness, I realized that parallels an earlier scene where Bernard tells Lenina that he would rather be unhappy than take soma and avoid his problems. How the tables turn...

Secondly: John. When I realized this parallel, I saw Bernard in John, which both excited me and worried me. Let's start with the bad stuff so we end with a positive possibility. When I saw their similarities (having independent ideas, being an outcast, and refusing to partake in ritual practices that they recognize as unnecessary or dangerous) I feared that John may have the same downfall as Bernard - that the ways of Society may be too much for him to continually reject, so he would eventually give in to it. However, I feel that John has a strength that Bernard doesn't, and he could end up doing something drastic or extraordinary.