Explore how 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' and 'Never Let Me Go' present the effects of society upon human beings, and what this says about humanity.

Authors Avatar

Jack Harrison

Explore how both novels present the effects of society upon human beings, and what this says about humanity.

In ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’ and ‘Never Let Me Go’, we are given a vision of the world not by an overall view of society, but by the ‘little’ individuals within it. We interact directly with Kathy, Pelagia, Corelli and Mandras and through them, we see not only their vision of society, but also the effect society has on them.

        Carlo Guercio argued that ‘history ought to consist only of the anecdotes of the little people who are caught up in it’. In ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’, it is the voice of the seemingly unimportant individual that guides us through the globally important destruction of war, and we can see clearly, through deBernières’ writing, the effects of society upon the individual. Dr Iannis is respected by all at the beginning of the novel, with the sole problem in life of being unable to write his ‘History of Cephallonia’. This is reflected in deBernières’ style of language in the opening chapters, giving us a clear sense of Dr Iannis’ character as he describes Stamatis’ ‘exorbitant auditory impediment’ in his own well-spoken and elitist manner. The uncontrollable war, however, destroys him, and he has his medical equipment, ‘gathered together through twenty conscientious years of poverty’, and the symbol of his respect and identity, completely smashed by the German soldiers. The complex, educated Doctor is just one of deBernières’ many perspectives at the beginning of the novel: the emotional, unstable and flighty Pelagia; the amorous, immature and naïve Mandras; and the utterly insane Mussolini. As the war slowly ravages the lives and livelihoods of the Cephallonians, all these once distinct personalities cease to be so distinct. Pelagia and Drousoula are described as having been ‘diminished by the war’; Mandras has gone from a handsome young fisherman to ‘nothing if not a toad’. The war even claims the lives of Carlo and Father Arsenios, and succeeds in making a ‘living corpse’ of Corelli, and leaving the Doctor ‘defeated and useless’. All the strong personalities we once knew are lost as the fight within society ruins every single one of them, and this shows how the war, and the changing society it brings with it, warps and contorts all of the characters in ways that we never could have thought possible in the opening chapters.

Similarly, the effects of society upon the clones are portrayed through Ishiguro’s emotionless writing. In ‘Never Let Me Go’, we see the world constantly from the perspective of Kathy. We never get to hear from anybody ‘normal’ and so we do not really know what society’s opinion of the clones is. Hence we are led by Ishiguro to make our own judgment about the clones, and how the society can seemingly turn a blind eye to this action. We do not see a wide range of different perspectives being oppressed by society, we see just one that has no will or desire to escape from it. Other than the very last paragraph of the novel, where the ‘tears roll down her face’, there are no obvious signs of emotion from Kathy at any point, and it is as if the way her life has been organised by the members of society responsible, has aimed to squash out any possible emotion. The life of a Hailsham ‘student’ is withdrawn and far apart from ‘ordinary’ life. The only opinions of the clones from the outside that we see are Madame’s gallery, to try and ‘prove they had souls at all’, and Miss Emily’s ‘disgust’ at the thought of the clones. It is made even more difficult by the fact that the reader is always treated by Kathy as one of her kind. She speaks to us personally; asking us what it was like ‘where we were’, which makes it hard to grasp the opinions shared between ‘normal’ people and clones.

Join now!

        One of the features of ‘Never Let Me Go’, in the early part of the book, is the other students’ treatment of Tommy. Though we do not know it at the time, the clones have nobody else but each other. This is revealed to us slowly, and it is symbolised at the end of the book with Kathy and Tommy ‘clinging to each other’ in the field. It becomes all the more upsetting to remember Tommy’s own kind bullied him in such the way, knowing full well he would ‘burst into thunderous bellowing’. The opinion of the students is summed ...

This is a preview of the whole essay