Finished Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. The story is a bit dry at the beginning, filled with internal monologues and conversations that seem irrelevant. I almost gave up on reading it. But slowly all the details piece together into a compelling story that speaks to the intricacy of human relations in an alienated world. Here are a couple thoughts I had while reading.
The first question I kept thinking over is who (or what) Klara really is. The more I try to piece her image together through recollecting details, the more I realize that Ishiguro intentionally makes her no one. She is to be a machine and nothing more. She has no flaws, no desires other than serving Josie and the family, and no free will in deciding what she should take her life to be.
Through the lens of Klara Ishiguro tells the tale of human alienation. The irony lies in that all the values that we hold to be good and honorable are exhibited on a machine, while humans have become the complete opposite. Alongside Klara’s kindness and selflessness, we see promises made and broken, relationships soured and forgotten, and lies made again and again in the name of love. This is an age when rationality and modernity reign, and people go through the same kind of [[dehumanization]] described in Kafka’s writings.
Klara, on the contrary, is what humans “used to be.” She has a spiritual devotion to the sun, the source of her power. She is programmed to believe in the “good begets good” logic and devotes herself to the welfare of others no matter how malicious they are to her. She is to be a rational machine, yet somehow has more faith than all humans in the book. I am not sure whether Ishiguro is lamenting the old days when faith played a central part in people’s everyday lives. Nevertheless Klara is in many ways religious, which only made her innocence seems like a dark fairy tale. (Connection to the TED talk [[Atheism 2.0]])
This story would not be profound if Ishiguro were to only criticize how [[modernity]] has corrupted humans. As Klara keeps observing and becomes more like a human (Josie), she realizes there is something about human that she can never become. She realizes that despite humans’ universal fear of loneliness, Rick’s mom is still willing to send Rick away for better education; despite Josie’s anger towards Rick for abandoning their future plan, she still paints the picture for Rick and wishes him the best; and despite the father’s disillusion with the mother’s plan, he chooses to stay with her in her most vulnerable moment. Actions like these can not be produced by giving a machine commands such as “be selfless” or “be loving.” It is much more complicated, and I think it is what Ishiguro holds as what makes us human. [[Love]] seems to be an oversimplification yet the best word to describe it.