Klara and the Sun: Themes (Edexcel IGCSE English Literature): Revision Note

Klara and the Sun: themes

The exam question on Klara and the Sun will ask you to respond to the question with critical, personal engagement. This means the examiners require your answers to be led by an interpretation of ideas delivered in the text. Whether the question is on character or theme, you will need to explore how the writer delivers ideas or themes via characterisation, setting and plot.

Below are some themes that could be explored in Klara and the Sun. This list is not exhaustive, and themes often overlap, so consider how these themes may cover other ideas too. 

Here you will find sections on:

• Love 

• Hope

• Humanity

Love

Klara and the Sun is the story of a robot discovering the meaning of love and, in a wider sense, the complicated nature of human relationships. The novel explores love through various lenses, examining whether human connection can be replicated and the lengths to which a parent will go to avoid grief. Even though all of the main relationships in the novel are unfulfilled (Josie and Rick, Chrissie and Paul, and Helen and her ex-husband), Klara learns what it means to love.

Knowledge and evidence

• The relationship between Klara and Josie is effectively presented as love at first sight, with the pair committing to each other during their first meeting:

  • Josie’s parting words are, ‘You won’t go away, right?’

• This commitment is emphasised by Klara’s subtle rejection of a potential buyer, causing her to be admonished by Manager

• Through the observation of Klara as narrator, the relationship between Josie and Rick is explored:

  • The young couple remain committed to each other, despite Josie’s sickness and their different statuses: one lifted and one unlifted

  • They share a long-standing “plan” to spend their lives together

  • This intimacy is emphasised through the seemingly telepathic ‘bubble game’, but Klara correctly understands that the pastime is ‘filled with danger’ because it exposes their underlying resentments and fears about the future

• The theme of love reaches its peak when Klara voluntarily sacrifices part of herself:

  • By giving up some of her P-E-G Nine solution, Klara risks a decline in her functioning capacity, but chooses Josie’s wellbeing over her functionality, deciding that the risk is worth taking

• The novel ends with Klara’s wise reflections on love, declaring that it was those who “loved” Josie who made her special:

  • Klara reflects that Mr Capaldi was wrong to think Josie could be artificially replicated because the uniqueness of a person is not held within them: it was “inside those who loved her”

What is Ishiguro’s intention?

• Ishiguro presents love as paradoxically simple and complex:

  • For Klara, love is straightforward, but in the humans she witnesses, she understands that love leads to divorce, conflict and confusion

  • This is established early on when Manager explains that reunited lovers often feel “a pain alongside their happiness”

  • It is further demonstrated by the fractured relationships between the Mother and the “substituted” Father, and Miss Helen and Mr Vance

• The theme of love is strongly linked to hope:

  • With love comes hope for the best outcomes

  • Klara’s entire mission is driven by the hopeful belief that the Sun will save Josie because of the genuine love that surrounds her

Hope

Hope is an enduring theme in the novel, highlighted in the actions and thoughts of Klara, and symbolised by the sun. It functions as both a vital life force and a painful burden: Ishiguro contrasts the pure, unwavering optimism of Klara with the traumatised, cynical hesitation of human adults.

Knowledge and evidence

• For Klara, the role of the sun is very simple:

  • Just as the sun gives the solar-powered robots energy, so too does the sun offer a similar prospect to humans, offering hope, vitality and even the promise of resurrection

• As the plot develops, Klara loses her innocence, but never gives up on the power of the sun, and therefore hope, even when faced with the prospect of hopelessness

• The sun is capitalised to “Sun” throughout, giving it a deity-like power

• In this way, the sun also becomes a symbol of the faith that people must show in order to maintain hope:

  • Klara’s hopeful outlook is moulded by the formative experience of seemingly watching the death of Beggar Man and his dog, only for the pair to come back to life as they are seen “hungrily absorbing the Sun’s special nourishment”

• The idea of faith and hope being strongly interlinked is later explored in Klara’s visits to Mr McBain’s barn:

  • Reaching the barn is presented as a kind of hard, disciplined pilgrimage

  • In the barn, as the sun sets, Klara offers her version of prayers and seeks to decipher messages from the light

• The lesson of the book is to maintain hope, for while the adults are so despondent about Josie’s health, they plan to “continue” her in an artificial way:

  • It is Klara’s memorable urging to Melania Housekeeper to “let the Sun do his best!” in pulling back the curtains that underlines her unshakeable hope, contrasting the pessimistic stance of Melania Housekeeper

  • Interestingly, as Josie begins to look better at the end of Part Five, Klara gives no emotional reaction, such was her optimism that everything would be fine in the end

• However, Klara’s hope actually requires courage because she does experience doubt and fear:

  • On the morning the Sun finally heals Josie, Klara admits to feeling deep fear, making her hopeful nature even more powerful

What is Ishiguro’s intention?

• By presenting Klara as the hopeful character, Ishiguro offers a damning criticism of humans’ lack of faith and hope:

  • Ishiguro highlights the tragedy of the human adults who have allowed grief, science and societal pressure to strip away their own belief in miracles and the human heart

• By extension, the writer suggests that if a robot is capable of devoted faith and optimism, surely humans should be able to hold such beliefs as well

• Overall, Ishiguro emphasises the importance of having hope even in life’s most challenging moments

Humanity

Ultimately, Klara and the Sun is a novel about what it means to be human, and whether a human is truly unique and irreplaceable. By observing humans from a robot, non-human perspective, Ishiguro holds a mirror to human behaviour, exposing our flaws and inconsistencies.

Knowledge and evidence

• The first-person narrative perspective of Klara offers an unfiltered, innocent insight into human behaviour and Klara’s reactions to events

• It is immediately apparent that Klara is incredibly humanlike, displaying empathy, understanding and humour, and showing alertness to nuanced behaviour:

  • But Klara does not shed her instinctive innocence, meaning she never adopts the less desirable traits of humans

• Early in the novel, the AFs are seen to mimic human behaviour when the B3 models distance themselves from the older versions

• Once living with Josie, Klara witnesses the malicious side of humanity when the guests at the “interaction meeting” threaten to throw her around in what would be a brutal assault if Klara were actually human

• Throughout the story, Paul nicknames Josie “animal”, clearly emphasising the raw instinct intrinsically contained within all humans, highlighting the contrast between organic human nature and the cold, calculated world of AFs

What is Ishiguro’s intention?

• In a struggle between the best and worst parts of human nature — in this case the hope displayed by Klara versus the unethical leanings of Mr Capaldi — the former is triumphant

• Klara, despite being an AF, becomes a role model for the humans in her life, and this goodness is recognised by her core family

• What is more uncertain, however, is how humanity might progress in a world in which there is genetic editing for some:

  • While Klara’s story offers hope, it is merely hope in the context of what remains a dystopian world