Characters in Kazuo Ichiguro’s Never Let Me Go deal with each other in very complicated ways.  There doesn’t seem to be very much directness and with every interaction there seems to be very thorough calculation involved.  This makes the relationships in the book seem almost artificial in some sense. For example, the relationship between Cathy and Ruth is incredibly complicated.  When Kathy confronts Ruth about her pencil case, they both end up feeling bad and awkward.  Kathy later expects Ruth to be upset with her – somehow reactionary – but instead Ruth was “completely civil, if not a little flat” (pg. 50).   But there’s no talking about the problem, there’s just this kind of uncomfortable distance.  Soon, Kathy finds a way to rectify the problem.  Another student in the class, Midge, asks about the pencil case and Kathy notices Ruth’s obvious discomfort.  Kathy speaks up and explains that the pencil case is a mystery and that no one can know about it.  I think this sentence is really telling – “Now, for much the same reasons I’d not been able to talk openly to Ruth about what I’d done to her over the Sales Register business, she of course wasn’t able to thank me for the way I’d intervened with Midge” (pg. 52).  To me, this is comparable to the entire existence of these clones.  There’s a kind of unspoken matrix that structures their lives.   The matrix has quasi-cultural elements, but it isn’t quite the well defined.  And the clones do seem to be almost post-cultural.  Even their art is currency.

I was vaguely familiar with the plot of Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go because I have seen the trailer for the film and mildly understood that the novel was about a society where clones existed for the sole purpose of organ donations. Had I not known this I certainly would have struggled a little bit more making sense of Kathy’s narration, but Ishiguro does a good job of slowly unraveling and establishing the world in which the characters live in, and I found that the jumps between the different time periods definitely piqued my interest as a reader.

From the beginning Ruth is depicted as a natural leader, at least from Kathy’s perspective. She inspires blind devotion and even in the midst of ostracizing Kathy, she still practices faith in the cause of the “secret guard.” Kathy narrates, “I think I sensed how beyond that line, there was something harder and darker and I didn’t want that.” It seems that as the children from Hailsham grow older they naturally begin to question the limitations and edicts that dictate their lives, while they cling to anything that gives their lives meaning and makes them feel special. This behavior is further evidenced when Ruth tries to propagate that Miss. Geraldine gave her the pencil case. Kathy at first desperately wants to illuminate her friends fabrication, but when she does, she receives no vindication whatsoever and she realizes, “Didn’t we all dream from time to time about one guardian or other bending the rules and doing something special for us?”

 These children are brought up in a society where they are cyclically deprived of the things that make them special. They work on their crafts only for the best to be selected for the gallery, which is an obvious allegory for organs they will be forced to donate later in life.

Never Let Me Go (2005), by Japanese-born British author, Kazuo Ishiguro, is an interesting science fiction novel.  What I found curious right from the start was the way in which Kathy narrates the story.  She speaks to the reader as if we know all the unusual attributes and ways of her world.  The very first line of the novel makes this strong point when Kathy states, “I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve been a carer now for over eleven years.  That’s sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on…” (Ishiguro).  Later on Kathy states, “You don’t have unlimited patience and energy.  So when you get a chance to choose, of course, you choose your own kind.  That’s natural” (Ishiguro).  By making these assumptions and using this tone of language and terms like “I know” and “of course,” I believe Ishiguro shows how Kathy doesn’t comprehend a world different than her own and therefore doesn’t make any attempt to first familiarize the reader with these unusual social practices.

This idea is even further exemplified by the fact that although we know very little about the process of “donations,” Kathy instead takes several pages to focus on the prank played on Madame to gauge her reaction.  Kathy describes all the details of the event: “Madame was sitting behind the wheel, rummaging in her briefcase… dressed in her usual grey suit;” however, she does not take the time to explain the strange presence of clones and the details of her unusual career.

Lastly, I also noticed that at several places, Kathy briefly speaks in the second-person.  For example, at the start of Chapter 2 she states, “I don’t know how it was where you were, but at Hailsham we had to have some form of medical almost every week…”  Does Kathy think that the reader is a clone, as well?  If she understands the difference between the non-clones and clones and she uses this language, I would think that she believes she is speaking to a fellow clone.  This would explain my very first point, as she believes she is speaking with someone familiar with the lifestyle.

I look forward to learning more about Kathy, Tommy and Ruth and hopefully the reader learns more about the unusual details of their world.

“Namispond! Jamispond!” When Professor Graves first told us in class what this phrase means, I thought of it as something cute and childish of Animal to say. I took it as a joke and thought nothing more of it. But as I read more and more, I really started to see the resemblances between Animal and James Bond. The covert operations that Animal is capable of are quite remarkable. He uses his abilities to pull off various James Bond-like feats. One of the most clear of these is when he scales the tree by Elli’s house on at least two occasions. He accomplishes this without being detected, while at the same time being close enough to eavesdrop and observe the inside of her house.

Similarly to how James Bond uses his good looks and charm to his advantage, Animal uses his deformity to his advantage. James Bond charms his way into befriending acquaintances often times for information or assistance and Animal uses his deformity to strike feelings of sympathy from others to build a trust. People do not see threats and dangers in Animal because their good judgment is clouded by their sympathy for him. Animal takes advantage of this trust and is able to continue his clandestine actions of doing things like poisoning Zafar. Sinha makes Animal a powerful character in this way because although Animal’s deformity closes many doors of opportunities for common humans, Animal adapts and opens others.

I also believe that Animal’s deformity makes him different from Bond in that Animal exempts himself from human responsibilities. Farouq is right when he exclaims, “you pretend to be an animal so you can escape the responsibility of being human” (209). When people view Animal as an animal, the standards of being human do not apply to him to the same extent as to common people. This ultimately gives Animal the freedom to do as he pleases and to answer to no one but himself. In this way, Animal is made more powerful than James Bond because he does not have a boss like M to report to. He picks his own covert operations and acts as a rogue.

I think his back deformity is the primary thing keeping him from actually being a real James Bond. Anjali confirms this with, “so strong, beautiful the top half of you, such a fine chest, strong shoulders. So good-looking a face. And this thing of yours…If only the rest of you matched, you could marry a princess” (241). This deformity keeps Animal from having the charm of James Bond. If Animal were to have his back fixed, I could really envision him as James Bond. It seems that the “Kampani” has robbed the world of an Indian James Bond.

Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People explains how the goal of attaining a profit leads to the exploitation of “invisible people” (Nixon). The book shares counter stories about the 1984 Union Carbide chemical plant gas leak. The event was the result of an American company exploiting people for their land and labor. Animal explains how before the company came to Khaufpur, “the factory lands were orchards” and then Union Carbide “threw its wall around the orchards” leaving outside the plant the ruins of what might have been a historic tomb (43).  The description of Union Carbide’s arrival to Khaufpur highlights how the company disregarded its impact on what existed before its arrival and simply inserted its factory into the landscape. Leaving the remains of the tomb in the surrounding areas of the plant demonstrates how international companies enter communities and build what is necessary while ignoring other aspects of the community that do not benefit them—even when the companies have the potential of helping the communities that surround their factories.

Companies’ goals of efficiency cause them to ignore how their practices impact communities. Animal explains how, as a child, he swam in “clay pits behind the Kampani’s factory where bulldozers would dump all different coloured sludges” (16).  He continues by altering his statement by explaining how he could not actually swim due to his deformities caused by the gas leak but that he would “wade” (16). The description of the plant dumping its waste in a manner that was economically efficient but negatively impacted invisible communities highlights how the goal of profit causes companies to ignore the detrimental impacts of their actions. The fact that factories continued to dispose harmful waste in manners that damaged communities even after the gas leak underscored the detrimental effects of such actions highlights how many international businesses lack concern for invisible communities.

Animal explains how profit-seeking goals also drive the actions of people who society uplifts for sharing the stories of victimized communities. He describes how journalists “come [to Khaufpur] to suck [the] stories [of victims] from [them], so strangers in far off countries can marvel there’s so much pain in the world” (5). Animal detests how “foreigners at the world’s other end, who’ve never set foot in Khaufpur, decide what’s to be said about the place” (9). Animal believes that the manipulation of the stories are part of “business” (9).  Animal’s interpretation of journalists’ actions explains how capitalism creates a hierarchy where certain individuals have the privilege of voicing their opinions while society silences other communities. The vampire-like “suck[ing]” of stories highlights how people with respected opinions exploit invisible communities. By romanticizing the victims stories, the journalists take away the people’s identity.  By suggesting that such unfair treatment is “business,” Animal suggests that corruption is inherent to capitalism.

As a privileged, wealthy white “Amrikan,” Elli has trouble understanding the way the impoverished people of Khaufpur think. This is because she lives in such a different world than “Animal’s people” and holds a completely different worldview than them. One of these different views is the perception of time. In one scene, Animal points out that Elli wears a watch whereas he doesn’t need a watch because knowing the exact time of day isn’t important to him. For Animal and his people, the present is all that matters, so it is always “now o’clock” (185). The poor think and operate in the short term. The current struggle in front of their faces at each moment, such as hunger, is what they focus on and try to overcome. For example, when hungry, they use quick fixes such as tying cloths around their bellies and drinking water to fill their stomachs. Then they move on to overcome the next struggle to stay alive. They have no time to make elaborate long term dreams for the future, so time is meaningless to them—as Animals says, “hope dies in places like this, because hope lives in the future…how can you think about tomorrow when all your strength is used up trying to get through today?” (185) Elli, on the other hand, comes from a world where she doesn’t need to worry about how to fulfill her basic needs such as food and shelter, so she has the luxury to think the long term and plan out her future to get an education and become a doctor.

Y tu Mama Tambien (2002) shares many of the characteristic of Hollywood movies particularly the “bromance road-trip” genre that became more prominent after the release of Easy Rider (1969). Hollywood movies often use an “invisible style” which draws attention away from the film making process and tries to immerse the audience into the story. The presence of a narrator does quite the opposite for the audience, and this is why it is more common to deliver subtle pieces of information through the mise-en-scene, dialogue, diegetic or non-diegetic music, etc. Y tu Mama Tambien does quite the opposite as the narrator’s presence is seen throughout the film. However, the movie is not simply unusual in its frequent use of narration, but also in the way the narration is used. Instead of simply complimenting the situation, the narration is used to reveal socio-political issues that have been present in Mexico. The combination of the narration which forces the audience to reevaluate the situation by pulling them out of the immersive plot of the movie, and the socio-political issues that are being raised help make this a film on globalization.

In this way, the film deals with many issues. One of the most dominant is the question of class. The main protagonists, Julio and Tenoch, share a bond that could be described as fraternal, yet it is made clear that they are in different social class. And though, outwardly their friendship seems to be unaffected by these differences, the narrator tells us otherwise, “[b]ut as truth is always partial, some facts were omitted.  It was never mentioned how Julio lit matches to hide the smell after he used Tenoch’s bathroom.  Or that Tenoch used his foot to lift the toilet seat at Julio’s house”. These little snippets of information that are parsed throughout the film, suggest a hidden clash between the social classes. Though outwardly they seem to like brothers, there are differences that lay beneath the surface; these differences suggest that neither feel completely comfortable in the others home. “Class”, here, is used as an example, but the movie also uses narration to bring up questions of gender, race, political corruption and the emergence of a global economy.

Y Tu Mama Tambien highlights the unjust legal system in Mexico that privileges the upper and upper-middle class while violating the rights of members of the lowest classes. The scene where Julio, Tenoch, and Luisa observe police arresting Mexican citizens for drug violations emphasizes how privileged individuals violate laws without repercussions while innocent members of lower classes confront “state violence” (768). Luisa, Tenoch, and Julio pass the police barricade without hindrance despite the fact that they possess significant quantities of drugs, while the military searches less fortunate individuals. The car comes to serve as a barrier that disconnects the characters from the hardships that they observe and “enabl[es] their love story to move endlessly forward through the landscape” (767).

The detachment between the wealthy protagonists and the characters that they encounter highlights the power relations in the country. Luisa, Tenoch, and Luisa interact with people who confront significant struggles; however, instead of learning about their lives, the protagonists exploit el pueblo in order to fulfill their needs. For example, farmers help Julio, Tenoch, and Luisa fix their car so they can pursue their goal of finding the beach. Such exploitation mirrors how Tonoch’s maid, Leo, caters to his needs, facilitating his comfortable lifestyle in a maternal manner, while Tenoch does not know basic information about her, such as the daily obstacles that she confronts. The disconnect illustrates how politicians and businessmen who implemented and benefit from NAFTA do not understand the impact of the policy on the lives of the people who enable their profit. Despite the fact that the movie surrounds the road trip of Julio, Tenoch, and Luisa, the plot seeks to explain a more complex story about the class dynamics from which the protagonists benefit.

Y Tu Mama Tambien is a coming of age story about two young Mexican men.  Elements of the film mirror a kind of box office, teenage film (e.g. Superbad) with the inclusion of drugs, the quest for sex and the goofiness of the protagonists.  But in this film, there’s a kind of subterranean theoretical matrix that adds to the richness of the film and begs to be analyzed.

The first real hint at this is when the two boys, Tenoch and Julio, are in Tenoch’s car.  They make some fart jokes as they complain about traffic.  One of the boys says that the traffic jam is probably due to protests but then a voice-over occurs and explains the real reason for the traffic jam.  A man that moved from rural Mexico to Mexico City for work, Marcelino Escutia, was hit by a vehicle and died.  The silence in the background of the narration really adds to the somberness of the information being spoken.

Throughout the film, these voiceovers act to remove the viewer from the action on the screen and contrast somber bits of information with the narrative.  Mostly, these facts are tied to the narrative based on location.  For this reason, they never seem forced.  Especially when the boys are in the car, the camera focuses out the window on the scenes being described.  These scenes act to provide a contrast with the narrative.  They also help to provide broad context for the very specific narrative taking place in the film.

As the narrator of Open City wanders aimlessly through the streets of the metropolis he embarks on several inner contemplations. His contemplations are personal, with regard to his previous girlfriend Nadege, but also public as he expresses continuous historical anecdotes from his own view and through the prism of a variety of characters that he meets in the many bars, museums and parks that the city has to offer. And so, the reader is taken on both an intimate and transnational exploration as he constructs an image of the city that encompasses an embedded global history.

Several of the characters that he engages with are immigrants from all over the world: Nigerians, Kenyans, Syrians, Lebanese – all of which serve to create a multinational collage of a city peppered with migrants.  Race seems to be a prevalent theme that is beginning to thread itself throughout. He recounts stories from characters that deal with the massacre of Native Americans in the North East by the European settlers (27) to present day segregation at the movie theatres. I would argue that Cole is establishing an image of the city for the reader that paints the present day struggles, rooted in America’s globalized racial history, that migrants experience being a non-white American. Thus, the lines begin to blur between the personal and the public, identity with race; Particularly the example of the Polish lecturer (43) who decides to dismiss poetry for the evening and discuss persecution and ‘the roots of persecution, particularly when the target of this persecution is a tribe or race or cultural group’.

The city itself is described in both intimate and anonymous terms. We are consistently presented with continual images of crowds that have undistinguished faces: ‘I tried to imagine her in that crowd, but no image came to mind’ and a blurring of identities and voices: ‘the voices of the protestors soon faded’ (24). Further, our narrator bumps into a ‘Mexican or Central American’ who had just finished a marathon in New York City, yet at the finish line he is not greeted by any family or friends. Further, he often deviates down alleyways described as being ‘all brick walls and shut-up doors, across which shadows fell as crisply as in an engraving’ (52). These two examples and the harrowing description of the alley emphasize a sense of anonymity and isolation one noticeably feels in the city. However, moments like these are juxtaposed against intimate experiences that he also recalls on his long walks. Through his specific, detailed descriptions of cabs, buildings etc, it almost, at times, felt like a small town filled with individuality.