Chapter 19

Things to note about chapter 19

• Kingsfield used to be a "holiday camp" and Hailsham is being bought by a "hotel chain". The contrast between the purposes of Kingsfield and Hailsham vs the hotel and holiday camp. Also, the impression of the building is dependent on the people who are in it, much in the same way that your impression of a person is influenced by the people around you.
• "faint odour of something medical on him" - reader identifies with hospital smell.
• "Tommy and Ruth made their way to another tree trunk, hollow and more emaciated than mine" Reflects the health of the respective parties. Tommy and Ruth are more hollow due to the removal of organs.
• "what we're supposed to be doing" they are aware of the purpose of their creation. Perhaps this is why they never try to do anything about their fate. Whereas Offred was part of a transitional society, she had experienced the freedom of the society before, the students of Hailsham have no experience of another life and so wouldn't recognise that what is being done to them is as horrifying as it seems to the reader.
• Ruth dies - she becomes just like every other donar Kathy has seen. She still maintains her humanity - the fight for survival, the periods of lucidity. Kathy also acts as any person would and attempts to reassure her. It gives Ruth's existance a purpose greater than that which she was created for in that she has now bought Tommy and Ruth together. She has changed something and has left her legacy.
• Kathy mentions the "ghastly battles"of the donars which correspond to earlier points made about references top war and war imagery.
• Her death os not dignified. She twists and contorts in pain. Ishiguro could have left out the details of her death, however it is the details which make the reader realise just how human she was after all.
• It also highlights the reality of the procedure. Previously when talking about donars completing there was no intimacy. It was just a cold medical term which related to nothing in the readers mind, and probably meant nothing to the children at Hailsham either. Having followed the characters in such a personal way, when the reader is presented with a situation where completion is so recognisable, especially to those who have seen someone in a similar position, it becomes difficult to distance the society of the novel from the society in which we live.