Norfolk and the Sense of Loss: The Bildungsroman and Colonial Subjectivity in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go

This essay argues that Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go reshapes colonial subjectivity through a sense of loss. By borrowing Homi Bhabha’s notion of mimicry, which characterizes colonial subjectivity as a state of ambivalence between assimilation and dissimilation, I explore how the clones’ collective retrospection posits Norfolk as the site of subject-forming loss and how Kathy’s narrative voice gradually signals the emptying of self.