Kazuo Ishiguro Trivia

1. What is the name of the fictional boarding school that forms the backdrop to Ishiguro's novel?

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: Hailsham

Recalled through the narrator Kathy H's eyes, Hailsham is described in idyllic terms as an oasis of culture and respect for the children who attend school there. Only gradually, almost imperceptibly, do we realise the strangeness of this school where students have no family but each other, and where words used casually such as 'guardian', 'donation' and 'completion' have a macabre reality lying behind them. Charterhouse, Alleyn's and Dulwich are real English schools - so Hailsham was the only fictional answer possible.

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Artist of the Floating World'

Answer: The night-time world of pleasure and entertainment

The 'floating world' that occupies the novel - and which symbolises the carefree decadence of Japanese society in Masuji Ono's youth - is the 'pleasure district' of bars, geisha houses, theatres and bright lights where men can come to drink, tell stories, and dance with women. For Ono's mentor (sensei), the artist Seiji Moriyama, the subject matter of all paintings should be concerned only with this transitory pleasure - "the best things are put together of a night and vanish with the morning" - rather than with serious subjects like politics. Masuji Ono later on rejects this view of the purpose of art.

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: They are human clones

Ishiguro paints a portrait, through narrator Kathy H's eyes, of students who are alike to other children in almost every respect - teasing each other, making and losing friendships, sometimes happy and sometimes sad. It's well into the novel before we clearly understand that all these children were cloned in a laboratory, and although they're too young to understand the picture perfectly they do know they've each been modelled on another human being.

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Artist of the Floating World'

Answer: Bridge of Hesitation

The bridge got its name because it was said that some men - stricken with conscience about whether to cross the bridge for an evening's entertainment in the pleasure district, or return home to their wives - could be seen hovering about the bridge, hesitant and undecided which course to take. The formal and coded manner in which many of Ishiguro's characters tentatively communicate with each other in the novel reflects the importance of hesitation and ambiguity as themes throughout the book, so that the Bridge appears to be symbolic of something wider.

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Butler

Very proud about his job.

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: Their organs will be harvested for transplant patients

By the period in which the novel's 'present' is set - the late 1990s - it seems this human organ donor programme has been running for around 50 years. Each cloned young person will donate organs to 'normal' human beings on up to four separate occasions until they 'complete' (die). If the operation is carried out poorly, some may die after only their first or second donation. A recurring fear many of them have is that, at the point of death, they'll still be semi-conscious as their body is being plundered for the remaining organs. As they grow to understand their inescapable role, the young people face it with a combination of pride and acceptance, mingled with fear, pain and depression.

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Mr Farraday

He's a nice, generous, American 'gentleman', in every sense of the word.

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: The art shows influential people that the students have a soul

The students at Hailsham are almost obsessively encouraged to produce paintings, poetry, sculpture and other art forms - the best of which are taken away by the silent figure of Madame. The young people endlessly speculate why she does this. Towards the end of the novel we learn that Madame and her lover, the head guardian Miss Emily, used the art in exhibitions staged to persuade powerful figures that these cloned children had souls and imagination, and should be treated as humanely as possible. Successful in this endeavour for a while, eventually the political tide turns against this 'liberalism', and the most humane schools for cloned children - including Hailsham - are closed down and demolished. In the post-Hailsham era, it appears future organ-donor clones will be treated more harshly and clinically, because those who plunder their organs cannot allow themselves to think of the young people as human.

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Artist of the Floating World'

Answer: Paintings being burned

When Masuji Ono's father learns that his son is thinking of becoming an artist instead of following him into his business, he burns Ono's paintings in an earthenware pot. Many years later, Ono denounces his star pupil, Kuroda, to the Committee of Unpatriotic Activities. Kuroda's paintings are burned in a police raid, and he is imprisoned as a traitor and physically maltreated until the end of World War II. Although Ono deplores the burning of Kuroda's paintings as 'going too far', his denunciation of Kuroda which led to this act has ironic echoes of his own father's view that unacceptable ideas can be burned out of existence.

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Anthony Hopkins

In the film, Farraday was played by Christopher Reeve,(Superman) if I remember rightly. The film did cut some of the more important aspects out of the book in my opinion.

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Evening

Stevens only realises this right at the end of the novel.

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: Carer

After leaving school at 16, and a transition period of a year or two, each young person trains to be a carer - providing counselling and support to the organ donors after their operations, each of whom will die after several 'donations'. Each carer, in turn, will themselves become a donor in due course. Kathy H has been a carer for more than eleven years, an unusually long time - but that is now due to end in a few months, and she too will become a donor - with her own 'completion' to follow within a few short years.

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Artist of the Floating World'

Answer: The 'Hirayama boy' has learning disabilities

The 'Hirayama boy' is around 50 years old but has the mental age of a child. Before and during the war people encouraged him to sing war songs and make patriotic statements, and gave him money and food because of it. Now that the war is over, with defeat and its accompanying sense of guilt, the 'Hiroyama boy' simply doesn't understand that times and sentiments have changed. He continues with the same patriotic behaviour that previously won him praise, but now he gets regularly beaten up as a result.

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Miss Kenton

Technically, she is Mrs Benn, but Stevens can not accept this and refers to her for the most part as 'Miss Kenton'

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: Having a baby

As a young girl, Kathy H often played the song 'Never Let Me Go' while dancing round with a cushion pressed to her chest. She imagined the lyrics were about a woman who'd been told she couldn't have children but who - to her joy - had miraculously had a baby. She is dancing while holding on to the baby tightly, fearing it might disappear. Ironically, since all the cloned students are sterile, none of them will ever have children, and sex becomes an emotionally meaningless function which the young people engage in fairly promiscuously.

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Darlington Hall

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: Norfolk

After leaving Hailsham at 16, Kathy H, Tommy and Ruth go on a day trip to Norfolk, a county that Hailsham students had grown up believing that if you lost something or threw it away it would end up there eventually. Ruth wants to go because she's been told that a woman in an office there looks like her, and she's curious to see if she could be the human she was modelled on. In the seaside town of Cromer, Tommy and Kathy H wander off and stumble across a copy of the 'Never Let Me Go' tape that she had lost years before, in a second hand shop. It poignantly echoes their childhood fantasy that everything lost ends up in Norfolk. Of the answer options given, only Norfolk is on the east coast of England.

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Artist of the Floating World'

Answer: Family background investigations

The highly formal marriage negotiations culminate in an interview (miai) between both families held in the Kasuga Park Hotel. Masuji Ono has come to believe that his enthusiastic support before the war for the imperialist 'new spirit', expressed through his paintings, will be highlighted by the Saito family's traditional detective investigations before the 'miai', and that this may prevent the marriage being agreed. He visits his pre-war acquaintances in order to influence what they will say if approached by a detective. Then, to protect Noriko's marriage prospects, he expresses regret at the 'miai' for his earlier enthusiasm for the military government, only to learn that his reputation as a champion of the 'new spirit' was not as well known as he had thought, and the Saito family was unaware of it!

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: As though searching for a jewel he had dropped there

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: Completion

Terms like 'guardians', 'donation' and 'completion' are used throughout the novel to soften the reality that all of these artificially cloned children have been produced and raised solely to provide essential organs for human transplant patients once they reach early adulthood. Resigned to this role, and even proud of it, the students nonetheless have a largely unspoken fear of the 'completion' which several organ donation operations inevitably brings. A popular rumour among them believes that if two students can persuade their guardians that they truly love each other then they can win a temporary postponement of their donations and so live longer. However Kathy H and Tommy, who become lovers after Ruth's death, discover there is no truth to the rumour - and no escape from their predestined role.

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Artist of the Floating World'

Answer: Drinking sake at supper

Masuji Ono promises his grandson Ichiro that he can taste his first sake during supper. For Ono, this act has enormous significance for Ichiro, related to his male 'pride', and he believes it is an event Ichiro will never forget. In Shinto custom, tasting sake is part of the Shichi-go-san ceremony undertaken by young boys and girls, and Ono's own son Kenji (killed during the war) had first tasted sake at Ichiro's age. Ono's daughters however, Setsuko (Ichiro's mother) and Noriko (now married to Taro Saito), believe that Ichiro is far too young to drink sake and they defy their father by forbidding it to happen.

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Mr Graham

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: Carey Mulligan

Carey Mulligan began her acting career alongside Keira Knightley in the 2005 film version of 'Pride & Prejudice', and Knightley co-stars in 'Never Let Me Go' as Kathy H's best but selfish friend, Ruth. At Hailsham school, Ruth took Tommy as her boyfriend simply to avoid being alone - even though she knew there was the basis of love between Kathy H and Tommy. Only many years later, shortly before her death, does Ruth set out to redeem her friendship by allowing Kathy H to acknowledge her love for Tommy. This allows them to have a brief love affair before Tommy's death after his fourth 'donation'.

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Because they were Jewish

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Moscombe

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Doctor

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Nothing more sinister than a faulty staff plan

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Mr Lewis

This is category 20061

= Top 5% Rated Quiz, Top 10% Rated Quiz, Top 20% Rated Quiz, A Well Rated Quiz
= added recently, = Editor's Pick = FunTrivia Editor = Gold Member
Teachers / educators: FunTrivia welcomes the use of our website and quizzes in the classroom as a teaching aid or for preparing and testing students. See our education section. Our quizzes are printable and may be used as question sheets by k-12 teachers, parents, and home schoolers.

 ·  All questions, answers, and quiz content on this website is copyright FunTrivia, Inc and may not be reproduced without permission. Any images from TV shows and movies are copyright their studios, and are being used under "fair use" for commentary and education.