Hailsham vs The South

In the novel Never Let Me Go, Hailsham is a place where students are kept and told what to do. One main focus for the children at Hailsham is art and the ability to be creative. While the students concentrate on making the best art in order to get tokens and for Madame to select it, they aren't worried about their life in the future. Their reality is a harsh secret that is kept from the children by their guardians and the less they know, the better. Likewise, in the book The Underground Railroad, the South is a place that appears as though everyone is hypnotized and black women don't realize why they are truly given more freedom than in most other states. The doctors in the South brainwash the black women to make them feel as though they are taking control of their lives. When the doctors don't tell the patients what they are really using the women's bodies for, they are completely oblivious and powerless. Essentially, in both novels, the students and black women are taken advantage of due to their lack of knowledge and therefore are taken advantage of their bodies as well.

In both Hailsham and the South, the minority groups are kept distracted to keep their knowledge limited. For instance, in Hailsham, the student's lives revolve around how creative they are. The students are so preoccupied on the present and improving in order to gain more tokens, that their future doesn't seem to matter. Although the students suspect the guardians are keeping a secret, it is not revealed that it has anything to do with them donating in years to come. The guardians make sure not to tell the students anything that involves the donations and brush off any curious children that approach them about their suspicions. With them in the dark, the guardians are able to ensure their destinies and remain superior which is technically, why the Hailsham children are donors and not the  "normal" humans. Similarly, in the South, they commercialize themselves as "better than Georgia" and this lures many runaways to their state. Although the South isn't discrimination-free, it seems much safer than the other states. While black people are busy getting jobs and experiencing a different way of life and seeing buildings like skyscrapers for the first time, they are unaware of what the South's intentions are. The South comes across as a land of new opportunities which for the most part, is true, but their secrets aren't so much exposed and black women especially, are kept from the truth.

While both the students and black women have limited knowledge, their bodies are both used for another person's benefit. In Hailsham, the students are eventually told that they will, later on, donate their vital organs. This becomes something that the Hailsham students believe as their only purpose in life and basically, accept it. Evidently, the student's bodies no longer belong to them and are meant to be used for someone else. This thought furthermore impacts the students into making them think they are not important and not normal which makes the process easier. Also, in the South, the doctors hide the fact that the black women are really used to provide medical research or to be sterilized. The fact that the doctors believed that it was okay to lie and proceed to use their bodies as science experiments showed how they viewed black women. They treated them as though they were not significant or not even human. In both places, people were used because of their lack of knowledge which made them appear vulnerable and their bodies were overall, taken from them.