Pull up the Covers

1, 2, 3, 4.

- What similarities and differences do you find? Speculate on the reasons for the various covers.    The covers combined have a yellow green to blue. The yellows in covers 2 and 3, I believe, were made to be a bit sickly, especially in 3, where they sky is tinged like that terrible and disgusting color in wii sports resort evening flyover. It looks a bit like phlegm, which goes with the bodily theme of the book.

    Every cover except 4 has both a quote and a bragging point, as well as "a novel" in cover 1 (really, are you sure?). Cover 4 is rather stark. I suspect it was made later after the book was already fairly recognized. That cover in particular shows the most about what the book is actually about. 2 and 3 put more of an emphasis on the author than the title of the book, with large text for Ishiguro's name.
    Covers 1 and 3 stress the book's sense of loneliness; 3 having a sad boat by itself and 1 having a girl sitting alone.
    They all have the sense of being a bit aged. They all seem to have fairly old pictures. I think cover 1 fades darker on the edges. Anyway, the picture's colors definitely aren't on point for modern pics, and the fashion and hair style (or should I say wig style, because that hair looks fake af, idk, maybe it's real) are pretty old. Pic 2 looks like an old blurry child picture. 3 could get away with being modern, but with some instagram filter used so some hipster could pretend it was old. The background image, behind the drawing, is super grainy and old looking. I think these covers are meant to play of the Madame's idea of Never Let Me Go holding onto an old world that is slipping away.



Okay, let's get going. We're going to do cover 2 and 4.

When I see cover 2, I think "childhood photo." It makes me think of an old polaroid picture, playing in the woods. Dancing, old memories.

When I see cover 4, I see a child's drawing. I see barbed wire and I think of concentration camps. I see trees behind the drawing and I think of escapes in the night or midnight walks.

Looking at cover 2, I would have thought the book was about a young japanese girl growing up, what with the author's name and dark hair. Maybe with Japan's recovery after WWII. I young royalty enjoying herself in her family's property when her position is being deteriorated by rising industry and a new American order. Kind of like Madame's view of Kathy H dancing, though much more conservative. Well, I guess the idea of holding onto an old world is conservative by definition. Anyway, after reading the novel, the blurred effect is absolutely perfect. It gives such a true idea about what memories are in the novel, fuzzy on the detail, but has the general gist.
   I'm assuming the person in the picture is Kathy H. I always thought Kathy was blonde or a redhead, but that's probably because she reminds me of my Mom, who a ginger. However, I don't remember any physical description of Kathy, so whatever. Even though it reminds me of an old picture, I don't imagine anyone taking the picture. The movement is so severe that I don't think anyone would be that close getting a picture. Besides, while I believe there's a mention of a polaroid camera in a Sale, it wasn't used heavily. I think seeing the image as not having a picture taker is fitting for the novel. It's like Kathy trying to imagine what it would have looked like when she danced as a kid. I think it's also really important that the person's face is hidden, and it's just hair in the picture. It makes the picture much more vague, and makes the picture much more distant and like a secret observer, which works of Kathy's distant reflection. While I said that the yellow was iccy before, it's not really that bad here, definitely worse in the boat picture. There is, however, still an eeriness in the color, but it also shows the idea of a golden childhood and implies a kind of rose-tinted glasses, which Kathy has, especially with Hailsham.
    Cultural connection? Eh, not really. There was the Asian thing, but I kind of placed that to the side. Though I guess she could be Asian, I don't know. Anyway, I guess it says something about the time period, but meh.
    If the face was visible, I would think that it was an autobiography some old person, and I would think that middle aged and older people would pick it up, but the lack of a specific person makes it more general.

Looking at cover 4, I probably would have said concentration camp or something like that. Probably some experiments with children, like the Athena plan in Zankyou no Terror or Kinderheim 511 in Naoki Urasawa's Monster. This dream sequence in Zankyou no Terror definitely has a similar atmosphere to the cover. It's actually quite fitting; the Athena plan and Kinderheim 511 were supposed to make superior humans like what people were concerned about in Never Let Me Go. Kinderheim 551, as you can guess from the name, was a German thing, and eugenics ideas spread through Germany, America and the UK. The cultural fear of engineered children, and the ideas of a heavily influential educational programs to make better humans, are connected with that area and time.

The picture of the drawing, which looks like a child's drawing, is from straight on and doesn't have a specific viewpoint. However, the trees, especially when the creases in the paper are interpreted as trees as well, make a viewpoint that's a bit low, looking up a hill. That's why I thought of kids escaping. The hill part does make it feel like there's a goal and a destination.
This cover is like 1984, Brave New World, Boy in the Striped pajamas, as well as the anime I mentioned, depressing book stuff. Read in school to ruin your life.