Quote 16
Her hair was darker than Ruth's—though it could have been dyed—and she had it tied back in a simple pony-tail the way Ruth usually did. She was laughing at something her friend in the red outfit was saying, and her face, especially when she was finishing her laugh with a shake of her head, had more than a hint of Ruth about it. (14.22)
Kathy and her friends are looking for signs that this woman might be Ruth's possible: her hair color, her mannerisms, even her ponytail. Are these the bits that make up identity? Or are they looking for the wrong clues?
"It's just that sometimes, every now and again, I get these really strong feelings when I want to have sex. […] That's why I started thinking, well, it has to come from somewhere. It must be to do with the way I am." I stopped, but when Tommy didn't say anything, I went on: "So I thought if I find her picture, in one of those magazines, it'll at least explain it. I wouldn't want to go and find her or anything. It would just, you know, kind of explain why I am the way I am." (15.110)
Kathy has questions about her body and she wants answers. So where else would she go looking besides the original body that she was cloned from? But really—what can that body tell her? It seems like Kathy might not realize that your environment has a lot to do with who you are and how you behave. Just look at what an effect Hailsham had on her.
Quote 18
I don't know if she recognised us at that point; but without doubt, she saw and decided in a second what we were, because you could see her stiffen—as if a pair of large spiders was set to crawl towards her. (21.12)
When Madame sees Kathy and Tommy outside her house, she has the same reaction she did so many years before. It's almost as if Madame isn't sure if Kathy and Tommy are human at all. How would this sentence be different if Kathy had replaced the phrase "what we were" with "who we were"?