GE2020-31C
| Date 日期: | 31 Mar 2021 | |
| Time 時間: | 3:00pm - 4:00pm | |
| Venue 地點: | Online Platform | |
| Medium 語言: | English | |
| Speaker(s) 講師: | Student Host: Alicia Le (BA Year 4) |
|
| Summary 內容: | “I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart.” Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro (石黑一雄)’s 2005 dystopian fiction Never Let Me Go tells the story of three close friends - Ruth, Tommy, and Kathy - starting from their childhood in the idyllic boarding school of Hailsham in the English countryside, through their tumultuous rite of passages, and ultimately end with their adulthood as organ donors and caretakers. Throughout the years, the friends’ lives are intertwined closely together as they fall in and out of love, drift apart and reconcile, navigating heartbreaks, hope, and discovering the truth about the world beyond the walls of Hailsham. The term “dystopian” often calls to mind bleak visions of the future wherein the Earth is destroyed and its resources depleted, robots enslaving mankind, with no place or time for peace and humanity, etc. Yet in Ishiguro’s story, one instead finds an ideal world where children are taught arts and literature, and paint and write poetry; one has to tread very carefully to find the subtle hints or traces of dystopia lurking underneath the still surface. It is against this dystopian backdrop that we, as readers, together with the characters, question what it means to have a soul, to be human, and how to live a complete life. Registration: ► HKU students only - https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?ueid=73980 |
|