Dreams and Passivity in Never Let Me Go

Ruth never even tries to work in an office.

"It's funny," I said, "remembering it all now. Remember how you used to go on about it? How you'd one day work in an office like that one?"

[…]

"Don't you sometimes think," I said to Ruth, "you should have looked into it more? All right, you'd have been the first. The first one any of us would have heard of getting to do something like that. But you might have done it. Don't you wonder sometimes, what might have happened if you'd tried?"

"How could I have tried?" Ruth's voice was hardly audible. "It's just something I once dreamt about. That's all." (19.90, 92-93)

The Hailsham students are just pawns

"I can see," Miss Emily said, "that it might look as though you were simply pawns in a game. It can certainly be looked at like that. But think of it. You were lucky pawns. There was a certain climate and now it's gone. You have to accept that sometimes that's how things happen in this world." (22.41)

Tommy is devastated to learn that there are no referrals. He throws a tantrum in a cow field, in a moment that brings us back full circle to the moment he is introduced for the first time in the novel (throwing another tantrum in a field). It's a rare moment of resistance against the status quo... but he soon gives up even on his anger...

I caught a glimpse of his face in the moonlight, caked in mud and distorted with fury, then I reached for his flailing arms and held on tight. He tried to shake me off, but I kept holding on, until he stopped shouting and I felt the fight go out of him. (22.95)

Ishiguro uses the motif of strong water currents to drive home how Tommy, Ruth and Kathy are powerless to change any of their story:

Then he said: "I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how I think it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever." (23.30)

And the last lines of the novel make it clear that Kathy will continue to do 'whatever (she is) supposed to'. 

The final sentence combines an image we have come to associate with freedom (Kathy's car) with an eerie and poignant acceptance of her imminent death. 

Once I'm able to have a quieter life, in whichever centre they send me to, I'll have Hailsham with me, safely in my head, and that'll be something no one can take away. (23.47)

I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be. (23.49)