Whose body is my own : readings of grey-market organ donation

This thesis focuses on two novels, Jodi Picoult???s My Sister???s Keeper (2004) and Kazuo\ud Ishiguro???s Never Let Me Go (2005), which are about children who are born for the\ud specific purpose of being organ and tissue donors for others. The authors build their\ud societies around economically incentivized relationships; the addition of commodity\ud value to human life in the novels encourages readers to look at how such societies can be\ud perpetuated and maintained. The work looks, not at the ethical and moral questions that\ud the novels pose, but rather examines how social structures - namely the education and\ud labor forces and the nuclear family - must change to accommodate this new economic\ud society. The analysis focuses on how each author uses style, structure, and character\ud development to dissolve pre-existing social bonds and de-familiarize the familiar to\ud create distance. The thesis reflects how involuntary organ donation, itself an oxymoron,\ud catalyzes both the redefinition and eventual breakdown of relationships in order to sustain\ud a culture driven by economic incentive rather than personal connection and identity