Simile - I'm taking to this blogging thing like a duck to water!

"I remember wondering if there wasn't something a bit odd about her posture, the way her head was bent down just a little too far so she looked like a crouching animal waiting to pounce." (Page 79)

      This too comes from the moments before the children learned that they were made simply to be donors later in life. It's sad, really. They couldn't grow up to be actors in America or anything special like that. They lived to give of their bodies. Of course, the full weight of this reality doesn't hit them until they are older, and even then they choose not to worry about it in lieu of other qualms in their daily lives at Hailsham.

       I have to be quite obvious in diagnosing the purpose of the simile in the aforementioned quote. Ishiguro simply wanted to demonstrate in plainer terms ho Miss Lucy was standing. However, the idea of the "crouching animal waiting to pounce" continues as she gears up to inform the children that their wildest dreams will, in fact, not come true. Her thought process like her body posture reflects that of an animal ready to pounce. She must have been weighing in her mind how best to approach the situation with words as an animal does when assessing their prey. Similarly, like with an animal pouncing on its soon to be eaten prey, the children's lives would never be the same as they heard the end of their life portrayed.

      I have to admit that it was quite refreshing to finally understand the purpose of these children and their upbringing. I was not quite right in my prediction that all people in their community donated their organs at the end of their lives. Therefore, I have changed my prediction to thinking that there are other boarding schools or institutions like Hailsham that produce children for the singular purpose of their pristine organs. I can't even imagine if this were nonfiction. Would that be considered a form of euthanasia? Or just long-winded homicide? Who knows? I am actually enjoying this book. Huh.