86 pages2 hours read

Kazuo Ishiguro

Klara and the Sun

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Character Analysis

Klara

Klara is the narrator and protagonist of Klara and the Sun. She is uniquely perceptive and observant, but her programming contains significant gaps in metaphysical and scientific understanding. While shrewd, insightful, and reflective on certain topics, she is also naive. She is never deceitful, but her perceptive limits result in her confident presentation of misinformation. Ishiguro does not provide abundant context and detail for the universe of his novel, so the reader must decide when Klara is analyzing a situation incorrectly.

Klara, whose name literally means “clarity,” is particularly adept at recognizing and distilling human emotions, even for an AF. She can tell when people are sad, even if they are trying to hide it, and can pick up a person’s underlying feeling even if their words contradict it. Her understanding of the inanimate world, on the other hand, is less complete. Her spatial awareness is made up of an array of boxes, but she can get confused easily if an area is cluttered or if objects or people move around. For some reason, she is not programmed with scientific knowledge of the sun, which allows her to believe that the sun rests in Mr.