From Brontë to Ishiguro: The Dystopian Evolution of the Boarding School Motif
From Brontë to Ishiguro: The Dystopian Evolution of the Boarding School Motif

Summary/Abstract: The present study proposes to examine the setting in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go as an important motif that invites comparisons to classic works while foregrounding the novel’s dystopian elements. By engaging with Foucault’s discursive ideas, this study will argue that Never Let Me Go transforms the traditional motif of boarding school as seen in such Victorian bildungsromans as Jane Eyre and David Copperfield into a biopolitical institution of care and control. It will examine the subject positions made available by this institution as well as the roles and activities that characters can adopt for themselves or assign to others. As this essay will demonstrate, these discursive positions are sustained through a medical gaze that reduces each character from an entity to a set of organs to be observed, examined, and labeled. The findings of this study suggest that Never Let Me Go could be interpreted as an allegorical tale of how modern institutions use discourses to normalize violence and erase individual agency under the pretext of progress and survival imperatives.

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