I recently finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest book and I wanted to write about what it told me.
If you haven’t read the book yet, you may be careful to continue reading.
The story is a dystopia and evolves around Klara, a robot that serves as an artificial friend for children and Josie, a teenage girl that suffers from a life threatening condition, that periodically makes here too weak to go outside. Josie is lifted, meaning that her DNA has been altered. She lives together with her Mother Chrissie and Melania who serves the family as a house-keeper. Josie likes to express herself by drawing. Josie had a sister who past away years ago. Her father and Mothers’ ex-husband has escaped into a community that defends alternate values from the society that Josie and Chrissie live in. Josie’s boyfriend-since childhood, Rick, lives next door. Rick, as opposed to Josie, has not been lifted, due to his mothers choice, who similarly, lives with him alone. They ever-since hold onto their future plans to stay together as a couple.
Chrissie spends a lot of time at work and follows a strict daily routine, which also means that Josie needs to get up on time while Chrissie drinks a quick morning coffee before rushing off.
At the end Josie goes off to College separately from Rick. This is when Klara starts to spend her days fading out in a dedicated area together with other AFs.
I read from the book that it makes a point about what it is that makes each human unique. Henry states that after his investigation that there is nothing unique about Josie and that Klara could, if allowed to sufficiently train to copy Josie, would make for good continuation of Josie. However, the family becomes so fond of Klara that as a reader I felt that sometimes her distinction as an individual becomes overlooked. Klara, however, artificially created, still has to learn about the world around her. Based on here own bodily constitution, she tries to explain to herself the surroundings. This is how she develops her concept of the Sun, which resembles a religious like believe into an all-deciding all-nourishing power. For instance, Klara infers from her observations from the front alcove that it’s because of the suns light a fallen down beggar comes back to live. However, at the end even Chrissie steps in for Klara, when Henry wants to disassemble Klara to mitigate societies tensions against AFs and to better understand what Afs actually are. So these two aspects, the seemingly non-uniqueness of Josie and the baffling personality of Klara, together are projecting what I think is one of Kazuo’s ideas. Namely that personality is an emergent characteristic of any form of live, be it natural or artificial.
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