Why AP?

Despite really enjoying this novel, I have often found myself questioning whether or not this story is of literary merit, or AP worthy. The rest of the books that I have read in this class have been rather challenging with several references, and deeper meanings that I would not have been able to understand without help. To me, a story of literary merit is something that has an important meaning that is not totally obvious to the reader and requires deep analysis and thinking. I have also found that there is usually some big event that somewhat ambiguously ties the whole story together and I have yet to encounter that in Never Let Me Go, nor am I anticipating one.

It is clear that my definition of a book that is of literary merit is rather narrow and specific. It can most definitely be argued that books that fit this type of category more often than not do fit this mold. That does not mean that they all must. There are plenty of books out there that use strong and confusing language with mysterious and odd content that aren't AP worthy. As was discussed in the previous post, the style and language of Ishiguro is not that of Margaret Atwood or Toni Morrison, but it does convey a deeper, darker message in a simpler, more reader-friendly way.

Obviously I am rather conflicted as to whether or not this is AP worthy based on the other works we have read for the class. I think I also may be conflicted because this is a more contemporary novel as it was published in 2005, which is obviously much more recent than the other books we have read in AP Lit. All of this being said, even though a lot of the books that are considered to be "AP worthy" are older and more "difficult" to read, that does not necessarily mean that they have to fit this criteria. So, perhaps, my view is just flawed? I truly think that I could see it go either way.

If we were to consider Never Let Me Go to be AP worthy I think it would be because of it's commentary on innocence and knowledge. The students of Hailsham are sheltered from their inevitable futures by their teachers. They know that they're different, but they don't know exactly why and they have questions that they know they can't ask. They know they can never reproduce and that they were put on Earth for a specific reason and that they have to maintain good health and be isolated from the "real world" in order to fulfill their duties. By the end of the book we find out that certain teachers really wanted to tell them and found it to be extremely unethical to not tell these children that they were going to become organ donors whether they liked it or not. Since it was their futures they had a right to know and sheltering them from the truth would only cause harm. Perhaps if they had had this knowledge earlier they would have lived their lives differently. While they may have been trying to keep them innocent, they were denying them their right to know their future. In this case innocence was ignorance, and it is clear that knowledge is very powerful and can be upsetting but it is better to be knowledgeable than to be ignorant.