MovieChat Forums > Never Let Me Go (2010) Discussion > Question about the headmistress and clon...

Question about the headmistress and clones having souls.

posted 13 years ago by Evangeline1
41 replies | jump to latest

This should be made into two posts really but I have 2 questions,
1 - The Headmistress - A sympathiser? or not?
So did the Headmistress Miss Emily actually believe they DID have souls? She says, "we had to see whether you had souls at all".....did she believe they did? Or did she think they did not and were not worthy of life?

2. Would a clone actually have a soul? I dont understand enough about cloning to know if a clone would have a soul but I wouldve thought a clone WOULD have a soul. I mean, isnt a clone just a genetic copy of an original, therefore it would have a soul right? How could someone know either way??????

[–] zanity 10 years ago

Good god, you do KNOW identical twins are natural CLONES? There is NOTHING magic in two creatures sharing the same essential DNA code.

However, vicious nut-cases throughout Human History have treated identical (or even non-identical) twins as 'gateways' to 'dark magic'. Nazi scientists, famously influenced by the United States Eugenic Movements of the early 20th Century, experimented on identical twins. Decades early, many tribes in Africa slaughtered all twins at birth.

As for the concept of 'soul'- well if something doesn't have a soul, it is no different from a stone or a robot. Depraved organised religions (and many pro-vivisection scientists today) preach that animals don't have souls precisely so they can justify the most appalling exploitation of animals. US slave owners said the same thing about 'black' Humans, and the US Supreme Court and every US president agreed with this unthinkable evil UNTIL the US Civil War was concluded.

During WW2, The Japanese scientists (who would all be 'pardoned by the USA after the war) declared their Human victims- whom they dissected while still alive and conscious- to be 'LOGS'. Obviously a 'log' doesn't have a soul.

Today's most outspoken so-called 'atheists' (real atheists don't deny the existence of their souls) declare that Humans and robots are fundamentally the same thing, and that souls are not real. These individuals, notably, give their absolute support to the warmongering of Israel, the UK and USA, are are proud to be rabidly anti-Muslim.

We exist in a clock-work universe, but we are fundamentally entities of meaning, so our souls imbue all of our experiences with semantics. The universe would continue to exist if meaning were extracted, but a meaningless Universe would be a lifeless universe. All life reflects meaning, by definition, which means all life results from some aspect of what we think of as 'soul'. This doesn't mean that plants 'have' a 'soul' but they are linked to the same essence that makes us 'us'.

Our 'soul' drives the body through interactions that occur in the brain. All mammals can 'live' (but not 'function') with just the primitive brain-stem - the part of the brain responsible for the autonomous functions that keep our body alive. Clones purposely grown with just a brain stem would NOT have a soul, and could be organ harvested without moral issue. But such clones would exist like a Human in a coma, wired to feeding tubes, etc.

[–] 10 years ago

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[–] lucianolvr 10 years ago

Clones purposely grown with just a brain stem would NOT have a soul, and could be organ harvested without moral issue. But such clones would exist like a Human in a coma, wired to feeding tubes, etc.

Uh, I would have a huge moral issue with that and would never take organs from a clone in a coma, with just a brain stem. Yikesaroni!😱

Love me some Waltons

[–] Evangeline1 10 years ago

After asking the original question of this thread I thought to myself, how could anyone know what a soul is? Or how could anyone find evidence of a soul anyway? Miss Emily states they were trying to see if the clones had souls at all...but how could that possibly be achieved?
The way she says "do you understand?"...the way she delivers that line seemed to me as if she did not believe they had souls. The way she looks at Casey Mulligan when she says it.
But like I say, how could they have found evidence of a soul anyway its impossible!

[–] lucianolvr 10 years ago

Yes, it's impossible because it's all a matter of belief. There is no physical "soul" that can be seen, for example, on an MRI or anything like that. It surely has no weight. It's what people believe we have, and have believed for centuries. It's a religious, spiritual idea. So basically it's a matter of opinion. It seems to me in the movie that Miss Emily believes that they don't have souls, as you saw too. I agree with you.

It's an interesting movie, but a sad one. In our world, there would be more rebellion for sure, by the clones or at least by those who were morally opposed to it.

Love me some Waltons

[–] macgirl66 10 years ago

SPOILERS AHEAD - Don't proceed if you haven't seen the movie.

I don't think they give any definitive answer as to what Miss Emily had concluded regarding souls in the clones. However, it makes sense that clones created from human DNA would as others have mentioned be effectively a twin "copy" of that original person. So if anyone has a soul, so would they. We know they were genetically modified so that they were sterile, as they did not want to worry about pregnancies in the clones and knew that as Tommy says, the urge to have sex is a natural part of the human experience. The reason why many things don't make sense to them, such as the comedy on TV shows and why it's odd to be peering into the travel agency is they were only taught what the school thought it would be beneficial and/or necessary for them to know. We also get told indirectly that Hailsham students have grown up much more sheltered than others in regards to the outside world.

I did get the impression that Miss Emily likely refused treatment obtained from clones due to her personal convictions and would live out her natural lifespan. No proof other than her beliefs about how clones should be used in society, knowing they always would be, that she could not change it, so likely may not have wanted one to die for her to live longer.

I also believe it is very important about Kathy and Tommy's visit with her. She tells them that they were trying to prove to the public that clones were basically human, trying to determine (and hopefully prove to the public) that clones had souls and it was wrong to be farming them like cattle. However, now that people were being cured of lung and breast cancer and Neuro diseases? That they would never give that up, it was just much easier to hide the clones from the public, literally treat them like a commodity and look the other way. Basically, the battle was lost.

I just wanted to weigh in on one other thing. These children are told from birth they are special, they spend 18 years hiding them from the world and indoctrinating them to the idea that they were born to give their lives to save the lives of others. It's not like they lived somewhere else, knew another life, and then were taken at age 8, 10, or 12 and then told they no longer had a future. I am not surprised at all that they accept their fate. Their whole life is being scanned in, scanned out told what to do, any aggression or other bad behavior is managed early. They are trained to believe this is their altruistic role that society has chosen for them, that's why they were "born", and they have a predetermined path that each of them will follow.

To each their own...opinion

[–] 10 years ago

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[–] zee944 9 years ago

1 - Yes, she was a sympathiser. It was implied earlier in the movie that her school treated the donors as humans unlike the other schools. And she confirmed it when Kathy and Tommy visited her.

2 - Yes. The simplified "no soul" conception was only brought up because the other schools where they treated the donors as animals. They would still have soul, but of course they'd be more constrained and simpler.

[–] Road_Reader 9 years ago

1. Watch japanese TV series version. You will know more about the Headmistress. The scene at the house is longer.

2. They knew the clones have soul. They ask them to draw because they want the world to see that they have soul. That's what Hailsham tried to do compared to other school. Looked like it didn't work.

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