Klara & The Sun

Reading Guide and Discussion Questions

Hi Everyone,

We will use this on the night of our meeting, but I thought it would be very useful to release it now.

It contains spoilers, so if you are midway, wait.

POV

As the story takes place from Klara’s point of view, we cannot access any information that Klara herself does not have.

•  How does this affect the storytelling? 

Setting

The story takes place in some indefinite period in the future. Many types of jobs have been taken over by AI technology. What clues do we have to support this?

Consider the use of the word “substitution”:

Father: “Honestly? I think the substitutions were the best thing that happened to me,… I really believe they helped me to distinguish what’s important from what isn’t. And where I now live, there are many fine people who feel exactly the same way.”

In what ways is this future not so far away from our present?

Backstory

We learn about the tragedy Josie’s family has suffered through the Snippets that Clara can overhear. What are these?

Language to Support World-building 

Words are termed to give us specific information about the world of Klara and the Sun. Some are defamiliarizations of banal objects or social concepts, and others are words that describe things from Klara’s naîve or limited perception. These become imagos in Klara’s psyche that symbolize the milestones of her understanding. Here is a list of them to discuss:

Oblongs Lifted        High-rank     Loose stones         the boxes Continue

Coffee Cup Lady and Raincoat Man        The Cootings Machine            The Purple Door

Symbols

McBain’s Barn The sun as an atavistic deity/“The Sun’s Special Nourishment”

Klara observes in the layers of glass “that in fact there existed a different version of the Sun’s face on each of the glass surfaces…. Although his face on the outermost glass was forbidding and aloof, and the one immediately behind it was, if anything, even more unfriendly, the two beyond that were softer and kinder” (273).

• How does Klara’s perception of the sun change over time?

Themes

Love and selflessness Loneliness

Holding on to what we call being human in a time in the future, when this notion begins to change. 

• What is the difference between Klara’s and Capaldi’s conception of being human?

Characters

Klara is created to prevent loneliness, but her function grows alongside her learning of human nature. Discuss. 

Nevertheless, her own character arc is slow and rather static. Her speech is formal and unvarying. Everything she does is oriented towards her prime directive: to help and protect Josie. 

• Klara is prized for her observational qualities as an Artificial Friend. How do the tone and style of her first-person narration help to convey the degree of her attention to detail?

• Rick and Josie carry on a quiet but intimate relationship through their drawings. What is unusual about their friendship and their plan for their future, given the social hierarchy for children based on their class and economic privilege?

• Discuss Klara and the Mother’s trip to Morgan’s Falls together. How does the scene give us insight into the Mother’s motivations? How are they important to the story?
• Do you think the Father was playing along with Klara to sabotage her inner workings?

Reveals

• Throughout the story, we are made aware of Klara’s vulnerability. What was your opinion on the plan to turn Klara into an avatar of Josie? 

• The mother becomes darker as the plot advances. There are clues in the final parts that suggest that Capaldi has succeeded in his task, and Klara’s “recovery” is not real. On the other hand, the text is ambiguous enough to suggest that it is in fact a literal recovery. Discuss.

Klara and Paul share a moment of concern and consideration regarding her ability to learn Josie’s heart, which he describes as: “Rooms within rooms within rooms…. No matter how long you wandered through those rooms, wouldn’t there always be others you’d not yet entered?” (216). 

• What do you make of Klara’s response about the finitude of such metaphorical rooms?
•  Would you say, in your own experience, you’ve been able to explore and learn all the rooms of your own heart, or another person’s?

When Klara talks about why she would have failed as an avatar for Josie, she says: “There was something very special, but it wasn’t inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her.” Discuss.

In the final scene with Klara’s old manager, the author says there is something wrong with the way she walks. 

• Do you think the limp was an indication that she was also a robot that was breaking down and no longer able to work effectively at her job?

We could speculate that something interfered with the birth rate in this future world. 

• Is it possible that Josie and her “lifted” friends are either DNA- enhanced children, or all another model of AFs, while Rick was one of the increasingly rare “natural” children?  Discuss.
• Klara could be contrasted to the story of Pinocchio. Discuss