𝐀𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐬: 𝐊𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐚 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐮𝐧
The whole cast isn't very large.
The protagonist is Klara, an Artificial Friend. AFs are a type of robot with human-level intelligence that are made to accompany children and teenagers when their parents are too busy with work.
Josie is the Lifted child for whom Klara was bought. Rick is Josie's Unlifted friend. 'Lifting' is never explicitly explained, but it can be inferred that Lifting is a risky procedure that can cause death and sickness like Josie's but also provide the children with some form of improvement. I believe that improvement to be intelligence.
Then, we have the Mother, who bought Klara for Josie, as well as the Father, who divorced the Mother and does not appear very often in the story.
Mr. Capaldi, a morally/ethically gray character who was hired by the Mother to make the AF-Josie [I will go into this more in later sections]
The setting/worldbuilding that the story has is a bit subtle but it's complex if you look into it. There's:
The concept of being 'lifted'
The discrimination/bullying of the Unlifteds, as well as the 'higher society' formed by the Lifteds
The omnipresent surveillance
The Cootings Machine and its pollution, etc
ONE - parental love and care, sacrifices
In this story, Klara replaces the role of the parent for Josie. You can see this in quote four [see quote section below] that Klara was effectively Josie's mother. Thus, we can see Klara's actions to be somewhat out of maternal love for Josie.
In the story, Klara worries about Josie's illness and her relationship with Rick and takes actions to fix it in her own way. She would do her best to be the messenger between Josie and Rick when cracks were forming in their friendship, helping both with their apologies. However, that was far from the extent of her sacrifices/actions.
In order to understand this, you need this context. AFs need the Sun's energy to function properly, so to Klara, the Sun is everything. You can equate her obsession with the sun to a religion. This will be expanded on in the third theme.
Coming back to this, back when Klara was still in her store, she sees a homeless man wake up on the pavement when the Sunlight fell on him. In her mind, she made the connection that led her to believe in the Sun's healing magic. Later, when Josie fell very sick, Klara decided to take up a mission that she believes to be given to her by the Sun. She does this not for herself, but in order to convince the Sun to save Josie. To achieve this, she sacrificed half of her fluid, the fluid that allowed her to think and observe and make conclusions. This is a great sacrifice for anyone, and especially to a robot whose best quality is her ability to observe. [quote two]
That is why I believe that the first theme should be the power of maternal love [shown by Klara] and the extent good parents would go to for their children.
TWO - lack of empathy and isolation in a future world
In the story's world, children [we only know about lifted children] have lessons with tutors online, so they are homeschooled/do not go to physical schools. As a result, they barely spend time with people their age. That is why AFs are so popular. There's no one to accompany them otherwise when their parents are out at work.
Circling back, the effects of this isolation is portrayed most clearly when the story introduces 'interaction meetings' [see quote eight, its not the best quote for this but it works]. The children are so deprived of human interaction that they need these special meetings to be hosted in order to come into contact with others their age. This exposes the 'coldness' of interpersonal relationships in the age of advanced technology and AI.
In real life, we went through a mini version of this during the COVID pandemic, where most of us had to stay at home and a lot of our interactions turned online. Here is the statistics from a study done on this topic:
45% of parents of school-age children say the pandemic has had a negative impact on their child’s social skills development. Half of them, 22%, report the social difficulty is ongoing, while the other half, 23%, say it has eased.
Nearly half of parents (47%) reported that their child’s social and emotional skills had worsened during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Links to the studies/news posts are provided in the comment section.
THREE - religious beliefs, faith and hope
The story shows Klara's obsession towards the sun and her belief in its healing properties. I have already touched on this before, and will come back to this again in the theories section, but I'll go more in depth here.
As shown before, Klara believes that the Sun has healing magic and sees it similarly to how religious people sees their god, so she would pray to it, beg it to help, believe that it would issue her trials and missions, etc.
Unlike the rest of the cast, who are shown to believe in science more than religion, Klara has created her own pseudo-religion.
There are parallels that can be identified between Klara's religious activities and what is observed in real life. For example, she would make the trek [pilgrimage] to the barn [holy place/worship place] to sit in the Sun's light [to be in the 'presence' of a deity?] and converse with the Sun [pray]. For another example, see quote six, where Klara is praying to the Sun for Josie for the first time.
Additionally, Klara's belief in the Sun led her to form a 'naive' hope that Josie could get better, even when all the signs point in the other direction and when everyone else has lost hope. It is this hope that led her to continue with her 'missions' and prayers [quote seven].
FOUR - inequality between humans and AFs
Klara is repeatedly shown to have human-level/above-human level intelligence, but even after her journey with the family, she is still treated like an object.
Mr Capaldi wants to take Klara apart and analyze her insides [see quote five for proof]. Josie does not appear to care much for Klara anymore after she grew up. Even before that, her attitude towards Klara fluctuates [quote one]. The Mother/the family threw Klara away to the Yard, a junkyard for AFs, after Josie left for school and Klara was no longer of use.
Even though AFs are robots made for humans, they still have, or at least kind of have, sentience and intelligence. Yet, they are treated as subpar in the story.
ONE - Josie died and Klara took over
It has been established early on in the story that Josie is a sickly child and there is a very real chance of her dying.
Then, in part four of the story, Klara and the readers are introduced to the idea of replicating Josie in the form of an AF and making Klara take over AF-Josie's body while mimicking Josie's mannerisms. Not long after we learn of this, Josie's illness takes a turn for the worse, and the Mother was giving up.
However, miraculously, Josie recovers surprisingly suddenly and quickly. Really weird, right?
Then, what if Klara is an unreliable narrator and Josie actually did die, and AF-Josie with Klara's consciousness in it took over? This theory has an issue in that at the end of the story, Klara is reminiscing the whole thing in a junkyard, which means that she could not have been AF-Josie - unless her consciousness was only copied over and then her original body was discarded.
TWO - Josie died and actually died
In part four, Klara carries out her plan of destroying the 'Cootings Machine', but that required half of her precious fluid. As mentioned in the first theme, the fluid is what allowed her to have cognitive abilities, so it is not far-fetched to believe that her observations and understanding of the world around her are greatly impaired after the incident, making her even more of an unreliable narrator.
This would explain Josie's sudden recovery, because it is possible that Klara's mental capabilities dwindled enough for her to hallucinate the whole thing after Josie grew worse. It is likely that Klara was thrown away into the junkyard after the incident because she could no longer fulfil her functions, whether as the AF-Josie or just a normal AF. The family would not have the energy to deal with a subpar AF on top of the dying Josie, thus Klara's abandonment. In her desperation to make sure that her sacrifices and choices actually meant something to her Josie, Klara dreamt up the rest of her tale as a kind of coping mechanism.
THREE - the whole story is Klara looking back on her journey
This theory is separate from the other two.
At the end, Klara admits that she spends her days at the junkyard reminiscing her past with Josie, this is supported by quote three in the next/last section.
In my opinion, it is also the strongest one, because it is supported by a clear quote. I will put it here because it is the core to this theory.
"Then Miss Helen – though I didn’t yet know her name – came into the room."
Here, Klara speaks of Rick's mother as if she is looking back on this incident from the future.
'You're my AF. So we must be good friends, right?'
But there were no smile in her voice. It was clear she wished to be alone to get on with her sketching, so I left the room, to stand outside on the landing.
I don't mind that I lost precious fluid. I'd willingly have given more, given it all, if it meant your providing special help to Josie.
"But I like this spot. And I have my memories to go through and place in the right order."
She’d do that if I really wanted it, she’d do it and let her job go, but I said, what would happen to Klara? And she was like, we wouldn’t need Klara any more because she would be with me the whole time.
‘I just wanted to ask Klara, that’s all. This is a chance for her to
make a lasting contribution…’
‘Klara deserves better than that.’
'I understand how forward and rude I’ve been to come here. The Sun has every right to be angry, and I fully understand your refusal even to consider my request. Even so, because of your great kindness, I thought I might ask you to delay your journey for one more instant. To listen to one more proposal. Supposing I could do something special to please you. Something to make you particularly happy. If I could achieve such a thing, then would you consider, in return, showing special kindness to Josie? Just as you did that time for Beggar Man and his dog?’
...
'I know how much the Sun dislikes Pollution. How much it saddens and angers you. Well, I’ve seen and identified the machine that creates it. Supposing I were able somehow to find this machine and destroy it. To put an end to its Pollution. Would you then consider, in return, giving your special help to Josie?'
‘Come on, Klara. She’s just getting worse. The doctor, Mrs Arthur, you can see it. They’ve just about given up hoping.’
‘Even so, I believe there’s still hope. I believe help might come from a place the adults haven’t yet considered. But we need to do something now quickly.’
‘Mom, if my grades are so good, do I really have to host this
interaction meeting?’
‘Sure you do, honey. It’s not enough just being clever. You have to
get along with others.’
Thank you for reading! If you liked my analysis, I would really appreciate it if you can like the post, reblog and follow me! That really motivates me ♡
Comment if you want to be added to my pinglist for character analysis or book analysis, like this one!
