Never Let Me Go: Chapter 22 Summary & Analysis

Miss Emily begins speaking to Kathy and Tommy, telling them that Madame, or “Marie-Claude” as she calls her, is now somewhat disillusioned with the idea of Hailsham—that Madame now wonders whether the school “did any good at all.” But Miss Emily, who created the school, always believed in its mission, which she details slowly for Kathy and Tommy. Emily first notes that school like Hailsham did not exist for decades after the development of clones, because, once organ donation and cloning technologies were created, people preferred to think that “their donated organs simply came from nowhere.” The idea was prevalent, before Hailsham, that clones were not people and should not be treated as such. Hailsham, and a small number of other institutions like it, were started in the 1960s as a reform movement designed to show that clones could be raised in humane conditions and accorded human dignity, even if clone and organ programs continued operating.

Emily then addresses the rumor of deferral and of the gallery. Although the deferral rumor is not true and “never was”—though many students have heard of it over time, and Emily and Madame believe that the rumor springs up organically among different classes of students—the gallery rumor “is” true, to an extent. The gallery is the house in which they speak at this moment—Emily and Madame, who appear to live in a domestic partnership, have been collecting the art for years. When Tommy asks why—since the art is not used to determine whether people are truly in love—Emily responds that the art was used to show that clones “had souls at all,” since so many in post-war England believed, as above, that clones were “sub-human.”

But Emily notes that all this came to an end once the Morningdale Scandal struck. Kathy asks what this scandal was, and Emily responds that, in Scotland, a rogue scientist named Morningdale began experimenting on clones whose attributes could be “selected” when the clone was created. These clones cause people to fear that Morningdale could create something like a “super-race” of clones. This caused an uproar across the country, and made it more difficult to argue for the ethical treatment of those clones that already existed. This negative tide caused financial support for institutions like Hailsham to “dry up,” and by the 1990s, Hailsham and other places like it had run out of money, and were forced to close.

Miss Emily says, however, that she now must go, since her assistant is arranging for the sale of a piece of furniture. Tommy and Kathy say that this is all difficult and disappointing news to hear, and that for them it’s not an exercise—“it’s their lives.” Emily and Madame seem to understand this, and apologize that there’s nothing else they can do—that Kathy and Tommy must simply “let their lives run their course.”

When Tommy brings up Miss Lucy, Emily dimly remembers her, and states that Lucy opposed the way that the school elided over certain facts of clone life until the clones were older. Emily goes on to defend her firing of Lucy, saying that things were better the way they went at Hailsham, and that Lucy’s method would have been no better for the clones in the long run. When Kathy complains that Madame always found the clones “repulsive,” Emily defends her, saying Madame “gave her life” for the clones, and that she (Emily) was also “repulsed” by the students—it took all her efforts to repress her distaste for them, even as she wanted dearly to help them—since cloning seemed unnatural to all non-cloned humans, no matter how sympathetic they were.

Emily says, however, that she “really must go” outside, and so Kathy and Tommy walk out and watch Emily's assistant help Emily into her car. Madame and Kathy have a final conversation, in which Kathy reminds Madame about their chance meeting while Kathy was listening to “Never Let Me Go.” Madame recalls the incident. She marvels that Kathy remembers so vividly, and that Kathy seemed even then to understand what was going through Madame’s mind as she wept while watching Kathy dance.

Kathy explains her fantasy regarding the child in her arms, and Madame counters that, although she didn’t necessarily she that version of the fantasy, she (Madame) nevertheless detected that Kathy was trying to cling to an “old kind world” with her slow dance, a world that no longer existed—and that the song seemed to reference. Madame wept because she knew that the clones would be flung into a crueler world—one that is better for some (recipients of the organs) but far worse, indeed unthinkable for others (the clones themselves). This is what made her weep. At this, Madame calls Tommy and Kathy “poor creatures,” gets choked up again, and touches Kathy on the cheek, saying “she wishes she could help. But now they are by themselves.” Madame then goes back inside, and Kathy and Tommy return to Kingsfield.

On the drive back, Kathy notes that the two of them spoke little. But soon, after it gets dark and they are on back roads, Tommy asks Kathy to stop the car near a cow-field. Tommy gets out into the dark, and then Kathy hears “three screams.” She rushes into the field to find Tommy having one of his tantrums, just like he did when he was in Hailsham. Kathy this time manages to grab hold of Tommy and calm him down, and Tommy apologizes for his outburst, and gets back into the car covered in mud from his flailing and kicking.

But this time, Kathy’s response to Tommy and his tantrum is different. Kathy tells Tommy that, “back at Hailsham,” when Tommy would have tantrums, perhaps it wasn’t because he was immature, but because “he knew something that the other students didn’t” about the unfairness of the world into which they would soon be released. Although Tommy protests for a moment, saying that his tantrums are only an indication of him “being an idiot,” he relents somewhat, acknowledging that perhaps, “deep down,” he “knew something the rest of you didn’t.”