Klara and The Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro
When the Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Kazuo Ishiguro in 2017, many of his fans including me felt vindicated. Ishiguro had previously won The Whitbread and the coveted Booker, but the Nobel recognised the significance of his ethereal, other worldly novels to all of humanity rather than just those in his adopted home country of the UK.
Because the themes that Ishiguro deals with are indeed common to all mankind. Many writers deal with the great themes of life, love, and death, of course, but Ishiguro’s fictional worlds are often fraught with ethical compromise; his protagonists accustomed to suppressing emotions, often subconsciously. The love, hopes, joy, ambitions, and fears they feel are sometimes invisible even to them. Duty plays an important part in many of his storylines, and the characters who serve accept their fate passively.
This can lead to accusations of implausibility. Why don’t these characters rebel? Escape? Seek another way of life? Cast off the life of indentured servitude and question their apportioned role?
There are myriad reasons why not, from brainwashing from birth to pride in their useful function (mirrored in real life by the dutiful work ethic of many in dangerous jobs in the 20C, such as coal mining). But more to the point, these questions seem irrelevant, because there is a dreamy aspect to Ishiguro’s novels; one which allows you to care about his characters while simultaneously realising they are often symbolic; mere wisps of allegory.
Ishiguro’s 2021 novel Klara and The Sun reminded me of 2005’s Never Let Me Go in the way from an early stage the reader knows that the first-person narrator is not living an entirely free life. Of course, historically, many people didn’t and still don’t lead completely autonomous existences because of constraints such as low finances, lack of healthcare, dearth of choice or options, scanty education, and overriding responsibilities, but in both Klara and Never Let Me Go, it becomes evident that the main protagonist’s raison d’être from early on is to help others.