Freedom and confinement in Never Let Me Go

If we were honest, though, particularly near the beginning, most of us would have admitted missing the guardians. […] But this was one thing we'd been told over and over: that after Hailsham there'd be no more guardians, so we'd have to look after each other. (10.7)



The woods were at the top of the hill that rose behind Hailsham House. All we could see really was a dark fringe of trees, but I certainly wasn't the only one of my age to feel their presence day and night. (5.4)

Of course, in practice, especially during the first months, we rarely stepped beyond the confines of the Cottages. We didn't even walk about the surrounding countryside or wander into the nearby village. I don't think we were afraid exactly. (10.9)


But I do like the feeling of getting into my little car, knowing for the next couple of hours I'll have only the roads, the big grey sky and my daydreams for company. (18.5)


I thought about Hailsham closing, and how it was like someone coming along with a pair of shears and snipping the balloon strings just where they entwined above the man's fist. Once that happened, there'd be no real sense in which those balloons belonged with each other any more. (18.37)

Then we came to a barbed wire fence, which was tilted and rusted, the wire itself yanked all over the place. When Ruth saw it, she came to an abrupt halt.

"Oh no," she said, anxiously. Then she turned to me: "You didn't say anything about this. You didn't say we had to get past barbed wire!"

"It's not going to be difficult," I said. "We can go under it. We just have to hold it for each other." (19.18-20)

But do you see what we were up against? We were virtually attempting to square the circle. Here was the world, requiring students to donate. While that remained the case, there would always be a barrier against seeing you as properly human." (22.28)


Never Let Me Go has many images of fences and barriers. Look closely at this last fence:

I found I was standing before acres of ploughed earth. There was a fence keeping me from stepping into the field, with two lines of barbed wire, and I could see how this fence and the cluster of three or four trees above me were the only things breaking the wind for miles. All along the fence, especially along the lower line of wire, all sorts of rubbish had caught and tangled. (23.49)