Anecdote

"Many of us had turned sixteen by then.  It was a morning of brilliant sunshine and we'd all just come down to the courtyard after a lesson in the main house, when I remembered something I'd left in the classroom.  So I went back up to the third floor and that's how the thing with Miss Lucy happened." - Never Let Me Go, page 90.

The quote above is a wonderful example of an anecdote.  Sometimes I find it hard to tell the difference between a flashback and an anecdote but I think that they can occasionally be interchanged, especially since they are serving basically the same purpose.  The purpose of this anecdote is to demonstrate an example that showed how troubled Miss Lucy had become.  Tommy had said that it had never occured to them to say anything or do anything to support Miss Lucy especially since they were all aware of how troubled she had become.  Miss Lucy was probably so distressed because she knew the awful futures that were in store for the students, as I already talked about before.  I believe this wholeheartedly because the instance where she talked to the students during the rain storm occured when they were fifteen and the time when Kathy found Miss Lucy in the classroom happened when some had turned sixteen.  The two times occured around the same time so obviously, Miss Lucy had been pondering over the thing for awhile.  It was really troubling her and she could hardly contain her feelings about the matter.