Klara and The Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro Sub Heading
Klara and The Sun is the story of an Artificial Friend who is exposed and learns about the complexities of the human heart.
The story begins with the reader being introduced to the store that the various “AFS” reside in, in this store we are met with various different personalities that accompany the “AF” store. From the conversations had inside the store we can see that the AF’s still lack various aspects of humanity, regardless of this deficiency Klara shines for her observatory skills often obsessing over minute details of the everyday human life that she observes in here rotational time at the front of the showcase of the store.
It is in these various interactions that the readers are exposed to the various themes associated with the book, Klara contemplates over the absurdism of two taxi drivers fighting one moment and patiently waiting at a red-light next moment. The idea of the feeling of hatred to the point of violence shakes Klara to her robotic core and produces various intrusive thoughts on the possibility of her ever feeling that same way with her closest AF friend.
These types of seemingly small human interactions often lead to various thought-provoking insights from Klara as she embarks on her journey to provide comfort for her teenager. A teenager that after a patient few meetings finally takes Klara home.
As Klara adjusts to her new life, we notice how she begins to analyze the complex situation she is put in. Her teenager is awfully sick, often only being able to stay in bed for days and the mother is often seen on the border of an emotionally collapse, having to juggle a sick child and her assumed executive level position at her work. Klara begins to pick up themes of death and love through her various encounters and even her own mind as she contemplates Josie, her teenager’s death.
As the story goes on, we are met with various character such as Rick who is Josie’s best friend and Klara learns of the couple’s plan to get married together in the future. A plan Klara is on board and sees it as a goal. Rick seems to be a smart child that with a reader’s inference can conclude that was never genetically modified as the other lifted children. With this crutch Rick and Josies plan is put under strain, Rick while being very gifted is not lifted thus, he will struggle to get into a respectable school unlike Josie. This is not the only hinderance to the plan, Josies health is deteriorating throughout the story, to the point that her mother with the aid of a Mr. Capaldi and the fear of losing another child, decide to create a sort of shell of Josie’s figure. A shell that Klara learns that she will occupy if Josie happens to pass.
The mother’s plan was foreshadowed in various parts of the book, When Klara was being interrogated by the mother in the process of buying an AF she has Klara perfectly recreate Josies walk, When Josie was too sick to attend a planned family gathering, Klara took her place and the Mother had Klara roleplay as Josie for a few touching but eerie moments as they embraced for the first time. Klara is at hesitant but agrees to go ahead with the plan to replace Josie, However Klara knows that she has one trick under her sleeve to ensure Josies survival, The Sun.
The Sun
Klara is powered by solar power and thus sees the Sun as a higher being that provides nutrients and light to the world. She notices how it disappears but always returns on a scheduled time. Klara has even witnessed it bring back a beggar and dog from death. In reality the beggar might have been intoxicated, thus not moving at all but in the eyes of Klara, the beggar and dog had died and lied dead until the Sun finally glossed over them with its nutrient filled sunlight. To an outsider this will seem like a divine miracle from the Sun and Klara sets out to recreate just that.
The Heart
Mr. Capaldi (when talking to the mother) asserts that the troubled mother should not worry about this new copy of Josie as humans have nothing unique or underlying about them. We only have our impulses and desires that can be scientifically proven and transferred over. Yet Klara realizes that the scientist was searching in the wrong place, for it was not in Josie’s heart that housed something special but, rather inside the love, the other character had for her. (Mother, Father, Rick, Housekeeper)
During an earlier scene We have Klara and the Father describing the aspects of the human heart, The father in a poetic sense describes the Heart as an intricate room with many floors and rooms within rooms, He argues that learning Josies heart will be a difficult task given the complexity of the environment.
Klara, the logical thinker, argues that while the room will be complex, it is finite and if the time comes she will complete her task of learning Josies innerworkings and successfully replicate her heart.
In the end Klara realizes that she could have never achieved this feat, as I said earlier, she could have perfectly replicated Josies Heart, but that uniqueness hidden inside the love other people had for her would be impossible to replicate.
The book ends with a bittersweet moment highlighting that all good things must come to an end, without spoiling too much, Klara reminisces on her memories and her journey with her Teenager.
Overall, this was a very wholesome and at times eerie read, it was thought provoking at times especially given our narrators limited understanding of the world, so we are learning about this world Kazuo built together with Klara.
I believe this is a great read for anyone interested in the field of Artificial Intelligence and its potential applications, this shows more on the everyday low-level use of the technology.