Klara And The Sun Sparknotes

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, answers important questions about humanity and discusses the ethics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and what it means to be human. The story starts with Klara, an Artificial Friend (AF), who is inside an AF store. However, Klara is different from the other AFs; she is much more observant than the other AFs, and this trait is what made her stand out to Josie, a fourteen-year-old girl who grew fond of Klara in the store. Klara takes special interest in the sun, looking up to it whenever she is in need of help as if the sun is some divine entity. Josie picks Klara to be her AF and takes her home, where Klara meets Josie’s mother and Rick. Josie is a lifted child, meaning that she has been genetically modified

First, Ishiguro uses the metaphor of the sun, to convey the importance of hope. Throughout the story, Klara looks up to the sun for comfort: she personifies the sun and sees it as a divine figure. Klara repeatedly references the “sun’s kindness” (Ishiguro 8) and this repetition emphasizes how she truly believes in the sun and seeks the sun for help. During a trip to Morgan Falls, that Josie cannot attend due to her illness, Klara imitates Josie at the wish of Josie’s mother. Klara starts acting strange, saying that there is “special help coming … [and] [Josie] will be well again” (Ishiguro 105). Here, Klara is referencing the sun, saying that the sun will give special hope to Josie. This is after many people already gave up hope on Josie, but Klara uses the sun as hope and says that the sun will provide help to Josie. The importance of this is because it is well known that the sun does not actually provide healing to people, but Klara repeatedly saying that the sun will heal her, shows hope, even when it seems hopeless. When Klara is at McBain’s barn, she tells the sun about Josie’s condition and begs the sun to “show his great compassion to Josie” (Ishiguro 26). Soon after, the sun comes out during a storm and shines on Josie, and this heals her. This shows the importance of hope as it is well known that the sun could not actually heal Josie, but it was the hope Klara provided through the sun

First, the society in the book clearly objectifies the AFs and discusses the ethics of the objectification of the AFs. For example, one of the boy AFs, named Rex, in the store has solar absorption problems and many customers refused to purchase him due to these problems. Although from Klara’s point of view, we can see that AFs have some sort of emotion, one of the customers blatantly disrespects Rex saying that he “is not for [her]” and that she will “find one that is perfect” (Ishiguro 7). This shows how people view AFs as less than human, and think of them only as a robot that is supposed to be perfect. This obviously makes Rex upset, but no one seems to care, as AFs’ emotions are typically not considered. Klara recognizes this problem and worries that Rex might “never find a home” (Ishiguro 7). This also emphasizes how Klara and the other AFs put so much effort in the store into being bought. To people, they are products, and any sort of problem with the personality of the AF is seen as a defect in the product. This makes the book enjoyable as this is a real-world question about the ethics of AI. If AI has become advanced enough to show emotion, like the AFs in the book, when do we have to stop treating them like products of industry and start treating them like people? The book's discussion of