Klara and the Sun

Ishiguro uses windows in Klara and the Sun as an expansive metaphor for the human condition, defined by love but also by strict limits. They symbolize both the boundaries of our perspective and the openness of the soul. Klara loves the AF store window because it lets sunlight in and allows her to observe the outside world and sate her curiosity. The people and cars that pass change, allowing her to observe and learn, but her perspective is always the same, leading to her misunderstandings about the significance of certain events.

Similarly, the window in Josie’s room is a source of warmth, sunlight, and deception. Klara and Josie watch the sunset together most nights, and it is a source of happiness and bonding for them. When Klara is confined to the Utility Room, Josie goes out of her way to help Klara gain a view through a window, thereby demonstrating her love for Klara. At the end of Part 5, Melania has the blinds closed, but Klara opens them, allowing the sunlight to flood in, and Josie begins her recovery. Because of the window’s angle and placement of the house, the sun appears to enter Mr. McBain’s barn as it sets, leading Klara to believe that the sun rests there at night. As a symbol of perceptive limits, windows in Klara and the Sun can be understood as an iteration of Plato’s “allegory of the cave,” in which cave dwellers give names to the shadows cast on the wall by objects in front of a fire. The shadows are true to the cave-dwellers, but they do not reflect objective reality. Plato argued for a theory of science and philosophy that transcends the cave, whereas Ishiguro accepts the limits of our perception as a feature of reality.

The sun is Ishiguro’s symbol for God. AFs are solar-powered, and because she derives her energy and being from the sun, Klara naturally assumes that the sun has special powers over all life forms. Her concept of the sun, manifested in her faith and prayers, resembles a number of religious traditions and theologies. Like Christ, Klara sacrifices her own body. Like Job, she sometimes doubts the sun’s compassion, wondering what Josie did to deserve her illness. Her sacrifice of the Cootings Machine and the sun’s prevalence in many polytheistic and pagan mythologies also draws comparisons to pre-Judeo-Christian worship. Because the sun doesn’t settle on a particular theological framework, its symbolism can be extended to a universal concept of God as goodness and love. Klara’s relationship with the sun also represents the repetition of history and human behavior, through the irony of a futuristic android reverting to the ancient tradition of sun worship.