"I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her!"

"I pray you, in your letters, / When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, / Speak of me as I am, nothing extenuate, / Nor set down aught in malice" (Othello, V.ii.339-42).

In Othello's final speech, he reestablishes his greatness and illustrates himself as a classic Shakespearean tragic hero.  First, as quoted above, he requests of his audience that they talk about him as he is -- nothing more, nothing less.

Then, Othello continues to say that he was "perplexed in the extreme" (V.ii.345).  When Othello killed his wife, he acted out of jealousy, but he argues that this jealousy was not entirely his fault.  Instead, he admitted that we was duped by the genius, witty, and attractive Iago.  (I'm taking some liberties in paraphrasing the text, here.)  I would argue that Othello's tragic flaw isn't his jealousy but his innate gullibility -- as Othello said in his speech, he is not naturally jealous but was hoodwinked into jealousy by the intelligent and beautiful Iago.  (Again, taking some liberties.)

Finally, Othello makes a little analogy.  One lovely morning*, Othello witnessed a Turk beating a Venetian, and Othello "took by the throat the circumcised dog / And smote him, thus" (V.ii.354-5).  Othello compared himself to Venice's enemy and explained through this analogy that he did not deserve to live due to his disservice to his people.  What a guy.

*lovely morning: setting not actually specified in the text

"When in doubt, move a pawn."

"'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'" (Never Let Me Go, 266).

As I've said, my favorite quotes in the book have been analogies, and now that I'm finished reading, I think it's appropriate that this is the last analogy I'm going to analyze. Miss Emily is comparing the students (or clones, as these last few chapters verified) to pawns in a game of chess. They're insignificant parts of society controlled by everyone else. This analogy does not make cloning for the sake of scientific progress seem like such a great idea.

That last part -- "'But think of it. You were lucky pawns'" -- has a bit of a double meaning for me. Miss Emily intended it to be a comforting reminder, but it had the opposite effect on my brain. There shouldn't have to be lucky pawns because there shouldn't be any pawns at all. Additionally, it doesn't help me to think that most of the world's clones live in horrible situations when I know that the "lucky" ones are the ones with truncated, unaware lives.

The sad comparison of the students to pawns is a reminder of one of the themes of the novel. Scientific progress should not stand in the way of human dignity.

"We've run out of time. We have this one-minute discussion period going on here."

"It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to" (Never Let Me Go, 124).

Though I'm still bitter about the oxford comma issue, I have to admit that Ishiguro is very good at making analogies. The other one I can remember is the puddle one, which also happened in a conversation between Kathy and Ruth.

It's an interesting idea to compare a quarreling conversation to a game of chess, but it's kind of accurate. There are some moves of little consequence that are kind of like pleasantries. There are moves where you put your opponent in an unfortunate situation, which is like being on the winning side of a debate. Then there are the moves that Ishiguro described, which are like when you slip in the middle of a conversation. Also, clocks in chess are the scariest things of my life; they're kind of like the Obama-McCain town hall debate when Tom Brokaw kept cutting them off.

Both this analogy and the puddle analogy described "mistakes" Kathy made when she was conversing with Ruth, and both of them allowed Ruth to embrace her annoying, manipulative side and dominate the conversation. Their characters really don't go well together. You know what characters do go together? Kathy and Tommy. I just . . . don't . . . like . . . Ruth.

Comma Splice

"It was like the split second before you step into a puddle, you realise it's there, but there's nothing you can do about it" (Never Let Me Go, 54).

This is a good analogy because it's something that most people can relate to -- the feeling of stepping into a puddle after you see it, or the feeling of trying to go up another step after you realize it doesn't exist. Sometimes you can get this feeling when there's not enough time to process what's going on around you. Other times, you have plenty of time to process what's going on, but you feel like you have to keep going no matter what. If you're cool, you collected these cards:

Either way, the feeling that Kathy had when Ruth alienated her from the secret guard in chapter five was a crappy one. This part in the book reminds us that the characters are still just children; these kinds of silly things happen with children.

Then, in chapter six, we get another good reminder of this with the symbol of Ruth's pencil case. Around this pencil case were bold actions, inquisitive minds, broken and reformed friendships, and little fibs. These are all parts of childhood.

The one thing that everyone should know is that when there are children present, you shouldn't use comma splices. They're worse than curse words. I hope the characters can't hear the horrible mistakes -- excuse me, literary license -- of Ishiguro. Bad influence.