Humans VS Monsters
What is the first thought that comes into your head when you think of the word "monster?" You may have heard of these monsters – Bigfoot, King Kong, Godzilla, Frankenstein. What feelings and reactions do you have at the mention of these names? These names usually strike fear into the hearts of many people. Why do you suppose we call such beings "monsters?" What about clones or robots? Are they also "monsters?"
The novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro poses this serious question for its reader – what makes people call others different from them "monsters?" What makes someone a "monster?" The nature of fear and its link to monsters is one of the novel's biggest themes. The fear that monsters instill in people is not because of something innate that monsters have. Rather, it is because of something innate that we have – the unsettling uncanniness to humans, as well as our own fears and inherent bias, are what makes us shiver at the mention of monsters.
The story of Never Let Me Go follows three characters: Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, who are taught at an elite school called Hailsham located in the outskirts of England. They, along with other students, are trained and encouraged to be the best at art. However, the dark underbelly of this institution is the fact that, unlike other humans, all of the students attending this school are clones being prepared to become organ "donors" in the outside world. These students are unlike others, their exact resemblances to their human counterparts and their lives predestined.
Much of the book refers to a fear of monsters. When the reader is introduced to the character of Madame, a Hailsham benefactor, Kathy, being very observant, notices the way Madame looks at the students, how she was afraid of them "in the same way someone might be afraid of spiders" (Ishiguro, 35). The idea of the presence of spiders creepily crawling around can send many people a shudder down their spines. Madame's gut reaction, like anyone else's, was to be afraid. There are also instances of the word "creature" being used to refer to Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth. "You poor creatures," Madame says (Ishiguro, 272).
Even the instructors at the school feel the same way. When Kathy and Tommy meet with Miss Emily and Madame to lengthen their lives, Miss Emily states:
"We're all afraid of you. I myself had to right back my dread of you all almost every day I was at Hailsham. There were times I'd look down at you all from my study window and I'd feel such revulsion..." (Ishiguro, 269).
Even though Miss Emily and the other guardians go to great lengths to educate the students and care for them, they still feel uneasy around the students because of the fact that they are clones. They still see the students as
Towards the end of the novel, the reader is able to get a sneak peek to what others in the outside world felt about clones like Kathy. According to Miss Emily, the head guardian of Hailsham, people preferred to believe these organs appeared from nowhere, or at most that they grew in some kind of vacuum" (Ishiguro, 262). These outside people choose to ignore the truth and do not want to face the reality of cloning and how it works, thus denying and denouncing the clones' existence as humans. They are frowned upon as lower species compared to humans. This world only sees the invention of cloning as bringing up new possibilities to cure previously incurable diseases, meaning that the focus of cloning was not on the humanity of clones or the clones themselves but rather the numerous benefits for humankind.
"So for a long time you were kept in the shadows, and people did their best not to think about you. And if they did, they tried to convince themselves you weren't really like us. That you were less than human, so it didn't matter." (Ishiguro, 263)
Because the Hailsham students are destined to become organ donors and then become "complete" (or pass away from making their last donation), they have no absolute control over their own lives:
“Your lives are set out for you. You'll become adults, then before you're old, before you're even middle-aged, you'll start to donate your vital organs. That’s what each of you was created to do” (Ishiguro, 81).
Although they could make individual choices (i.e. purchasing merchandise at the Sales), their overall life paths are set in stone and the same. They are forever trapped in this cycle of cloning established by the humans.
Just in the same way that these students are denied basic human rights of freedom and free will over their own lives, Ava, a robot with exceptional artificial intelligence in the movie Ex Machina, feels trapped. The premise of the story is that Nathan Bateman, a rich CEO of a search engine company, invites Caleb Smith, a promising young programmer at the company, to his isolated estate to test Ava whether she is human or not. After creating Ava, Nathan Bateman keeps her locked in a room with no other outside contact with other beings other than himself. She is denied physical access to the outside world; the only outside contact she has is through cutouts from magazines and a small terrarium display of plants.
Through her test session conversations with Caleb Smith, Ava finds out that Nathan will take her apart to build a new, improved robot. With Caleb's help, Ava is able to leave her confinement and explore the natural world outside of her room. Ava was able to assimilate herself in human society, blending into the crowd of people. However, in the process, she kills her creator Nathan and a fellow robot named Kyoko, and traps Caleb in the compound.
As viewers, it is easy at first to assume that Nathan was the villain in the film, but we must also realize that Ava perhaps may have been the villain all along. She used her wits, manipulation, and charms to convince Caleb to help her escape her prison. Wanting to prevent Ava from escaping during the whole movie, Nathan clearly knew what Ava was capable for, as evident in this scene where Nathan reacts to Ava out of her room:
Nathan seems very cautious, and his expression when he realizes that both Ava and Kyoko stabbed him with a knife seems very shocked. Even Nathan did not realize how much Ava was capable of – to hurt others for her own gain.
Through this film, the director Alex Garland plays with the viewers' emotions and perspectives on AI technology and how it could potentially affect the world. We can see the humanity in Ava and in the cloned students, but at the same time, we can see the potential that robots and clones, both being more superior than us, could eradicate the human race. This gives off the eerie thought that this situation must be prevented and therefore, to do so, humans must make sure that these beings do not have the kinds of thoughts that could lead them to do as such.
Media like Never Let Me Go and Ex Machina prove to show different perspectives on other human-like beings. They have led me to conclude that it is our own inherent fears and warped understanding of monsters that makes us associate other beings like robots and clones to be monsters themselves. It is our portrayal of negative consequences of such beings that manipulates our perspectives on them.
Works Cited
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. Penguin Random House, 2006.
"Ex Machina (9/10) Movie CLIP - Go Back to Your Room (2015) HD." Youtube, uploaded by Movieclips, 14 July 2016, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxXrccK4S3I.
The novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro poses this serious question for its reader – what makes people call others different from them "monsters?" What makes someone a "monster?" The nature of fear and its link to monsters is one of the novel's biggest themes. The fear that monsters instill in people is not because of something innate that monsters have. Rather, it is because of something innate that we have – the unsettling uncanniness to humans, as well as our own fears and inherent bias, are what makes us shiver at the mention of monsters.
Photo credit: Amazon.com
The story of Never Let Me Go follows three characters: Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, who are taught at an elite school called Hailsham located in the outskirts of England. They, along with other students, are trained and encouraged to be the best at art. However, the dark underbelly of this institution is the fact that, unlike other humans, all of the students attending this school are clones being prepared to become organ "donors" in the outside world. These students are unlike others, their exact resemblances to their human counterparts and their lives predestined.
Much of the book refers to a fear of monsters. When the reader is introduced to the character of Madame, a Hailsham benefactor, Kathy, being very observant, notices the way Madame looks at the students, how she was afraid of them "in the same way someone might be afraid of spiders" (Ishiguro, 35). The idea of the presence of spiders creepily crawling around can send many people a shudder down their spines. Madame's gut reaction, like anyone else's, was to be afraid. There are also instances of the word "creature" being used to refer to Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth. "You poor creatures," Madame says (Ishiguro, 272).
Even the instructors at the school feel the same way. When Kathy and Tommy meet with Miss Emily and Madame to lengthen their lives, Miss Emily states:
"We're all afraid of you. I myself had to right back my dread of you all almost every day I was at Hailsham. There were times I'd look down at you all from my study window and I'd feel such revulsion..." (Ishiguro, 269).
Even though Miss Emily and the other guardians go to great lengths to educate the students and care for them, they still feel uneasy around the students because of the fact that they are clones. They still see the students as
Towards the end of the novel, the reader is able to get a sneak peek to what others in the outside world felt about clones like Kathy. According to Miss Emily, the head guardian of Hailsham, people preferred to believe these organs appeared from nowhere, or at most that they grew in some kind of vacuum" (Ishiguro, 262). These outside people choose to ignore the truth and do not want to face the reality of cloning and how it works, thus denying and denouncing the clones' existence as humans. They are frowned upon as lower species compared to humans. This world only sees the invention of cloning as bringing up new possibilities to cure previously incurable diseases, meaning that the focus of cloning was not on the humanity of clones or the clones themselves but rather the numerous benefits for humankind.
"So for a long time you were kept in the shadows, and people did their best not to think about you. And if they did, they tried to convince themselves you weren't really like us. That you were less than human, so it didn't matter." (Ishiguro, 263)
Because the Hailsham students are destined to become organ donors and then become "complete" (or pass away from making their last donation), they have no absolute control over their own lives:
“Your lives are set out for you. You'll become adults, then before you're old, before you're even middle-aged, you'll start to donate your vital organs. That’s what each of you was created to do” (Ishiguro, 81).
Although they could make individual choices (i.e. purchasing merchandise at the Sales), their overall life paths are set in stone and the same. They are forever trapped in this cycle of cloning established by the humans.
Just in the same way that these students are denied basic human rights of freedom and free will over their own lives, Ava, a robot with exceptional artificial intelligence in the movie Ex Machina, feels trapped. The premise of the story is that Nathan Bateman, a rich CEO of a search engine company, invites Caleb Smith, a promising young programmer at the company, to his isolated estate to test Ava whether she is human or not. After creating Ava, Nathan Bateman keeps her locked in a room with no other outside contact with other beings other than himself. She is denied physical access to the outside world; the only outside contact she has is through cutouts from magazines and a small terrarium display of plants.
Photo credit: IMDB
Through her test session conversations with Caleb Smith, Ava finds out that Nathan will take her apart to build a new, improved robot. With Caleb's help, Ava is able to leave her confinement and explore the natural world outside of her room. Ava was able to assimilate herself in human society, blending into the crowd of people. However, in the process, she kills her creator Nathan and a fellow robot named Kyoko, and traps Caleb in the compound.
As viewers, it is easy at first to assume that Nathan was the villain in the film, but we must also realize that Ava perhaps may have been the villain all along. She used her wits, manipulation, and charms to convince Caleb to help her escape her prison. Wanting to prevent Ava from escaping during the whole movie, Nathan clearly knew what Ava was capable for, as evident in this scene where Nathan reacts to Ava out of her room:
Video Credit: Youtube
Nathan seems very cautious, and his expression when he realizes that both Ava and Kyoko stabbed him with a knife seems very shocked. Even Nathan did not realize how much Ava was capable of – to hurt others for her own gain.
Through this film, the director Alex Garland plays with the viewers' emotions and perspectives on AI technology and how it could potentially affect the world. We can see the humanity in Ava and in the cloned students, but at the same time, we can see the potential that robots and clones, both being more superior than us, could eradicate the human race. This gives off the eerie thought that this situation must be prevented and therefore, to do so, humans must make sure that these beings do not have the kinds of thoughts that could lead them to do as such.
Media like Never Let Me Go and Ex Machina prove to show different perspectives on other human-like beings. They have led me to conclude that it is our own inherent fears and warped understanding of monsters that makes us associate other beings like robots and clones to be monsters themselves. It is our portrayal of negative consequences of such beings that manipulates our perspectives on them.
Works Cited
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. Penguin Random House, 2006.
"Ex Machina (9/10) Movie CLIP - Go Back to Your Room (2015) HD." Youtube, uploaded by Movieclips, 14 July 2016, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxXrccK4S3I.
I agree that the fear of the unknown can make you view someone or something else as a monster. I believe we also fear losing power or control over situations, which is what Nathan was most likely fearing once Ava got out. He had no problem with Ava when she was confined inside a tiny box, but once she poses a real threat to him he feels the need to shut her down.
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