Can Kazuo Ishiguro's Novel "never Let Me Go" Be Seen as an Example of Dystopian Literature?

In the present essay I will deal with Never Let Me Go written by Kazuo Ishiguro in 2005 and the question if this novel can be seen as an example of dystopian literature.

To answer this question it is first of all necessary to find out how dystopian literature is characterized at all and how it differs from utopian fiction and then, as a next step, to analyse if Never Let Me Go actually goes with this definition.

[…] imaginative literature is one of the most important means by which any culture can investigate new ways of defining itself and exploring alternatives to the social and political status quo.

For Booker utopian and dystopian fiction are the acmes of imaginative literature, as it is defined above, because they both try to show up possibilities how people and society can reorder and change themselves in order to improve their living circumstances. Utopian and dystopian arrangements present these possibilities in different ways: utopian fiction, "with its quest for the ideal society" , simply offers examples and strikes new paths how the social environment could meliorate conditions of living. Dystopian literature otherwise "situates itself in direct opposition to utopian thought, warning against the potential negative consequences of arrant utopianism" , which means that it criticises existing social and political systems and more often highlights potential ways of abusing these. Booker admits that many literary works contain dystopian elements or potential if they include "a particular kind of oppositional and critical energy or spirit" , but nevertheless these works cannot be categorised as dystopian fiction because they do not rely on a dialogue with utopian idealism as the most important aspect of their social criticism. Furthermore these works do not use the element of defamiliarization which is "the principal literary strategy of dystopian literature" as Booker states. Defamiliarization in this context means that the author tries to focus their criticism of society and politics on "imaginatively distant settings" in order to sensitise the reader to problematic or dubious incidents in the real world and to make him realise abuses more quickly. The use of imaginatively distant settings and estrangement is also common in science fiction literature and an overlap between dystopian and science fiction is often noticeable. In general, however, the difference between these two genres lies in the element of social and political criticism which usually does not appear in science fiction.

To sum up, it can be stated that, referring to Booker, three questions need to be answered to find out if Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go can be seen as dystopian fiction:

Does Ishiguro criticise social or political conditions?

Does the author's criticism rely on a dialogue

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