Faith in the System

"Thinking back now, I can see we were just at that age when we knew a few things about ourselves- about who we were, how we were different from our guardians, from the people outside- but we hadn't yet understood what any of it meant." page 36

The students at Hailsham have grown up trusting the system, even when things seemed not to make sense. The "gallery" has never been seen by any of the students, yet they all believe it exists. What, where, and why it actually is remains a mystery to the students, but it seems to me like religion. We have not seen God or Heaven but we trust and believe in their existence. They think that Madame cares for them until they try to test a theory and prove that she is actually afraid of them, "shudders at the very thought of you- of how you were brought into this world and why (36)," in fact. The narrator then likens the fear of them to a fear of spiders (35). The six who tested the theory had not anticipated how they would feel as the spiders; it was all fun and games until it was reality. They have trusted their school and the way they are raised, until they don't... Without understanding all the circumstances and situations, they went with it when they were young, but now Kathy and Tommy are trying to put the pieces together and figure out what they don't know. What first sparked their intrigue was a conversation with Miss Lucy when she stated that they "weren't taught enough about donations and the rest of it (30)." The two were confused at what it was supposed to mean and try to put together clues; they know there is a connection, a link between it all, but they don't know what. Their thoughts provoke thinking about what is really going on and who they are. They begin to question the system they have trusted and gone along with without knowing everything, but is it too late to figure it all out?