Reading Hyperreality in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go in the Light of Baudilliard's Simulacrum | ||
| CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education | ||
| Volume 91, Issue 1, July 2025, Pages 93-123 PDF (700.43 K) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/opde.2025.455987 | ||
| Author | ||
| Engy Salah Tawfeek Saleh | ||
| Damietta Faculty of Arts | ||
| Abstract | ||
| The research is intended to investigate hyperreality in Ishiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go (2005), working on the intricate relationship held between the spatial setting, on one hand, and identity, reality, and social consciousness, on the other hand. The research works on exploring the bio-dystopian setting of Ishiguro’s novel in such a way that sheds light on how the place is constructed to intentionally formulate people’s destiny and self-image. Both setting and characters in the novel are fictitious, yet tightly held up to reflect bitter reality. Both are proven to be typical examples of Baudrillard’s simulacra. Since Never Let Me Go focuses on the effect of biotechnology in shaping the future of humans, the representation here tends to be more of a bio-dystopian nature. The research tries to show how the theme of cloning in the novel succeeds in contextualizing hyperreality that proceeds to support reading of place and characters in the novel as bio-dystopian. The setting appears to present a chaos- free image of the world; such an image that proceeds within its hyperreal representation to introduce the readers to a worse and more depressing one. The setting and the characters supposedly stop to be mere reflection of how people actually exist. Instead, it moves toward constructing a more positive perception of what things should be, before everything is subverted towards a horrible reality. Alongside, the theme of resistance is deconstructively presented to imply compliance and conformism. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Never Let Me Go; Baudrillard; Hyperreality; Simulacra; Bio; dystopia; Foucault’s biopolitics | ||
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