Never Let Me Go Section 4

Various people throughout the world support the ideology "kill one, save a thousand."  The novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro poses a similar, yet more radical question: what about kill one, save one?  This question begs yet another question: Who?  Would people be willing to allow the death of someone they do not know in order to save someone they love?  This novel attempts to answer this question in an almost futuristic manner.  Society does not want to be reminded that these "donors" exist which demonstrates a sense of guilt and regret for allowing such a society to manifest.  The question Miss Emily poses in Section 4 of the novel ironically serves as an all-encompassing answer.  She says, "How can you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable, how can you ask such a world top put away that cure, to go back to the dark days?  There was no going back.  However, uncomfortable people were about your existence, their overwhelming concern was that their own children, their spouses, their parents, their friend, did not die from cancer, motor neuron disease, heart disease" (Ishiguro, 263).  Here, Miss Emily answers all of the proposed questions.  If one is selfish, then it is worth it to kill one in order to save another.  It does not matter who is being killed so long as they are placed on the margins of society and as far from one's thoughts as possible.  Finally, a world that has been given an elixir will never be able to put it away or give it back, and such behavior would not be expected.  With this theme, the novel appears to offer a warning: do not let something like this happen because there is no way back once the world has gone there.