What Cover Would You Choose?

Brief example of all four images:

Top Left: This book cover is an image of Kathy sitting in what looks like a field of small flowers.  She is looking off into another direction, not looking at the "photographer" and she is looking down at the same time, kind of looking upset for some reason.

Top Right: This book cover is an image of a boat being tied up to a pole on the edge of the bank.  The ocean and the background and the entire cover is all a dark yellow and black color.  It is also very foggy.

Bottom Left: This book cover is all very dark and grey.  It is an image of an outlined shirt.  The shirt outline is made with barbed wire and the inside of it is an outline of organs like the lings and others.

Bottom Right: This book cover has a yellow background and in front of the background is a girl with short brown hair and a light blue dress.  Her image is very faded and it looks like she is twirling around.

Some similarities that I found are the use of quotes from big publishers such as Time that recommend the book, and this occurs in three of the four books.  One of the biggest similarities that I found was the use of "blurred images" in all four of the covers.  In the top left image, the girl and her surroundings are all blurred out by the photographer on purpose but it causes some discussion as to why.  I believe that the photo is blurred because it shows the imperfections that the reader will find in the book, because there are a lot of things that are not right in the novel.  The image in the top right is not as blurred but it still is,  The background of the image is blurred from the reader and I believe it is because of the fog or the clouds as well as the darkness of the image.  In the image in the bottom left and bottom right, the entire images are blurred.  In the bottom left, before I even examined it closely, I could not tell that the outline of the shirt was barbed wire and that the background of it were shaded in trees.  I just thought it was a distortion of color.  In the bottom right image the entire image is a blur,  The background is all yellow and blurry, like it was originally a painting that was done on purpose and then the girl on the book is so blurry you can't tell what she is doing or how she even looks.  

A main difference that I found within the book covers are the color use.  Each of the covers used a different style of color.  One uses colorful green and orange, another one uses a darker yellow and black, another one uses a grey/blue color scheme, and another one uses yellow and light blue.  How does the color of the book cover leave a different impression on the reader?  In my opinion it gives off a different mood to the reader to interpret going into the book and I do not know why Ishiguro would want to do that.

2 Texts:

1. The first word that comes to my mind when looking at the image on the left is photo shoot.  This is because the girl being shown looks like she is striking a pose for the photographer.  She is looking away from the camera like a lot of photographers say to the people that are taking pictures.  The first word that comes to my mind when looking at the image on the right is vital.  This is because this image is showing all vital organs that one needs to survive and intertwined with them is the title  Never Let Me Go and it makes me think that you should never let your vital organs go because you need them to survive.

2. If I would not have read the book, the image on the left would have made me feel as though the book was going to be about a girl and her journey through life, especially the hardships that she has faced in life.  I feel like she would have had a secret place out in the woods that she would go to to get away from everything and everyone.  When looking on the image on the right, before reading the book, it would have made me feel as though it was about a person who had some sort of cancer.  Going through the child's last days/life until his sad death and watching him/her meet another child and become really good friends with him/her and then the friend not wanting to lose a friend they just got.  After reading the book, I believe that the relationship that this cover has to the book is that the girl in the photo is Kathy, the narrator, and she is sitting in Hailsham contemplating what her future is going to be like now that she knows what her sole purpose is.  The image on the right is a little more simple to dig in to in my opinion.  I believe that this image symbolizes the students of Hailsham and how they are raised for their sole purpose to donate their vital organs and they don't have a say in anything they can do.  The barbed wired implies that part and the drawing of the organs represents the organs the students will be giving away.

3. In the image on the left, I believe that Kathy is being portrayed because she is the narrator and the main character.  In the image on the right, I believe the image is a visual representation of all students at Hailsham.

4. When looking at the image on the left, this image does not spark any cultural construction of the book.  On the other hand, when looking at the image on the right, it does big time.  The image is an entire outline of what Hailsham is and who the students are and what their purpose is.  It shows that Hailsham is a place that traps the students (hence the barbed wire) into forcing them to donate their vital organs (hence the organs in the shirt) when they grow up.

5. I feel like a person who would write this book is someone who is uncertain about what the use of clones and cloning will be and this is an idea or concern the author has about it.  The author might have other ideas about cloning will be used for but he thought this was the most important one to talk about.  The people who would read this book could be people who are fans of Kazuo Ishiguro's writing or people who are interested in what the future could hold about cloning and this is an option.  The reader could be interested in what the outcome of this use of cloning is and wants to read and know more about it.