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.
No comments:
Post a Comment