"I found I was standing": Three blackboards on Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go"

The blackboards from my class's discussion on 6 May of a passage from Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. This passage, to be precise, which is the last paragraph of the novel: 

            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. It was like the debris you get on a sea-shore: the wind must have carried some of it for miles and miles before finally coming up against these trees and these two lines of wire. Up in the branches of the trees, too, I could see, flapping about, torn plastic sheeting and bits of old carrier bags. That was the only time, as I stood there, looking at that strange rubbish, feeling the wind coming across those empty fields, that I started to imagine just a little fantasy thing, because this was Norfolk after all, and it was only a couple of weeks since I’d lost him. I was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic in the branches, the shore-line of odd stuff caught along the fencing, and I half-closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I’d ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and gradually get larger until I’d see it was Tommy, and he’d wave, maybe even call. The fantasy never got beyond that—I didn’t let it—and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn’t sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.

"So he had fallen": A blackboard on James Baldwin's "Go Tell It On The Mountain"

The blackboard from my class's discussion on 4 October, 2018, of a passage from James Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain. This passage, to be precise:

So he had fallen: for the first time since his conversion, for the last time in his life. Fallen: he and Esther in the white folks’ kitchen, the light burning, the door half-open, grappling and burning beside the sink. Fallen indeed: time was no more, and sin, death, Hell, the judgement were blotted out. There was only Esther, who contained in her narrow body all mystery and all passion, and who answered all his need. Time, snarling so swiftly past, had caused him to forget the clumsiness, and sweat and dirt of their first coupling; how his shaking hands undressed her, standing where they stood, how her dress fell at length like a snare about her feet; how his hands tore at her undergarments so that the naked, vivid flesh might meet his hands; how she protested: “Not here, not here”; how he worried, in some buried part of his mind, about the open door, about the sermon he was to preach, about his life, about Deborah; how the tape got in their way, how his collar, until her fingers loosened it, threatened to choke him; how they found themselves on the floor at last, sweating and groaning and locked together; locked away from all others, all heavenly or human help. Only they could help each other.  They were alone in the world.

"My name is Kathy H.": Two blackboards on Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go"

The blackboards from my class's discussion on 29 April of a passage from Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. This passage, to be precise, which is the first paragraph of the novel: 

My name is Kathy H. I'm thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year. That'll make it almost exactly twelve years. Now I know my being a carer so long isn't necessarily because they think I'm fantastic at what I do. There are some really good carers who've been told to stop after just two or three years. And I can think of one carer at least who went on for all of fourteen years despite being a complete waste of space. So I'm not trying to boast. But then I do know for a fact they've been pleased with my work, and by and large, I have too. My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. Their recovery times have been impressive, and hardly any of them have been classified as "agitated," even before fourth donation. Okay, maybe I am boasting now. But it means a lot to me, being able to do my work well, especially that bit about my donors staying "calm." I've developed a kind of instinct around donors. I know when to hang around and comfort them, when to leave them to themselves; when to listen to everything they have to say, and when just to shrug and tell them to snap out of it.  

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A blackboard of stills from the James Ivory film of Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day"

The blackboard from my class's discussion on 15 April of a set of stills from James Ivory's 1993 film of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.