"The book may be more subtle or detailed but I can't accept the plot the way it is shown in the film."
The book is more subtle. The revelation that the children are clones comes much later in the book than it does in the film.
"If the children know they are going to be used and die young why don't they run away or misbehave?"
There have been a few threads on this board addressing that question! The most likely reason is that since the clones have been subjected to indoctrination all their lives (like people in a religious cult), any spark of initiative and independence has been drained out of them. In any case where would the clones run away TO?
"If the whole business is known to the public there would be some rebel movement against it,like the campaign against slavery."
The book explains in more detail about why schools like Hailsham were opened. The people who opened Hailsham wanted to prove that clones were more than "mere organ donors". Before Hailsham, things were a lot more wretched for clones, being brought up in conditions that were far less humane.
"Are the donors allowed or able to reproduce?"
I believe clones are sterile. I can't imagine many opportunities arising for them to meet and form romantic relationships with ordinary people.
"So perhaps the plot is unrealistic and daft? or is it really clever?"
The story is set in a "parallel universe". In this film the cloning breakthrough happened in 1952, one year before DNA was discovered in our "own universe". In another thread I speculated that the Nazis might have won WW2, so there were no moral concerns about the ethics of medical experimentation on human beings, and cloning became a reality much sooner. In fact, the "medical experiments" in Auschwitz gave Ira Levin some inspiration for his own clone novel The Boys From Brazil.
"If the donors are an underclass who exist only to serve the people higher up society's pyramid is the story an allegory of real society?"
It could be an allegory if you like. Some people have been saying that. We're all indoctrinated to conform with the rules that society imposes on us. For example we're conditioned from an early age to believe that hard work is virtuous and idleness is "bad". So much so in fact, that anyone who hasn't been fortunate enough to find a job is unfairly branded a "bludger". It's been said that guilt is a slave mentality. But it doesn't HAVE to be like that. There are people who manage to break out of the rat race and live alternative lifestyles. There's an interesting book by Tom Hodgkinson called How To Be Free, a book that encourages people to try and break out of the cycle of conformity we find ourselves stuck in. (Nothing to do with cloning, of course.)
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