“Shadowy Objects in Test Tubes”: The Ethics of Grievance in Kazuo Ishiguro'sNever Let Me Go

Abstract Every community demands sacrifices from individuals within it, and sometimes such sacrifices can be extreme. To experience harm related to this sort of sacrifice is to be in a state of grievance. Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel Never Let Me Go offers readers a compelling fictional account of severe grievance experienced by its narrator-protagonist and other clones destined to die young when donating their organs to non-clone, or “normal,” members of their community. By presenting radically aggrieved clones as visibly indistinguishable from the “normals,” Ishiguro dramatically challenges traditional understandings of the state of grievance and compels readers to re-examine their own reactions when confronting the spectacle of grievance.