Klara Sees Reason
In my view, something important happens on page 9: the word “see” appears seven times, “look” six times. There’s also “follow with one’s eyes,” “fix one’s gaze,” and “make eye contact.” All on a single page! See what I mean?
Now look, Kazuo Ishiguro is a Nobel Prize-winning writer. He knows that one of the “rules” of good writing is to favor variety. Don’t repeat; use a synonym. Or better yet, delete. Avoid redundancy.
We should be on the lookout for moments when a writer (or visual artist, or composer, or choreographer) disregards the “rules.” These moments invite interpretation. There may be more going on than meets the eye.
In the entire book, words like “see” and “look” occur over eight times as often as “hear” and “listen.” “Eye” appears eighty-nine times; “ear” just thirteen.
This preponderance is surely due to the fact that the narrator possesses “extraordinary observational ability.” After just two days in the store window, Klara’s observations equip her with extensive knowledge of human behavior—and soon thereafter with insight quite profound. Human beings, she realizes, can act one way when they feel the opposite. They may even feel contrary emotions simultaneously.
Later, Klara’s vision occasionally goes a little wonky, dividing up into “partitions.” Rereading these scenes, I came to recognize this as a special visual superpower.
And yet, Klara can’t smell. She can’t taste. Her sense of touch comes up only rarely. (Among dozens of comments about the sun’s appearance, there’s only one about its warmth.) And while her sense of hearing seems to have come preloaded with perfect pitch (she notes that Josie’s voice ranges “between A-flat above middle C to C octave”), this seems more useful as a potential party trick (“sing for me the harmonic minor scale”) than an ability for gaining useful knowledge, let alone wisdom.
Listening is a struggle. Klara has trouble making out words in the Open Plan, Capaldi’s studio, the sushi café, the theater, and everywhere outdoors (which, she says, has “unusual acoustics”). Gradually she learns to glean information from tone of voice, but these efforts are rudimentary, and are sometimes compromised by her partition-vision, which makes sound fade to the background.
(I couldn’t help but notice that there’s essentially no music in this story, just some snatches at the theater. A monotone “Josie, Josie, Josie” that the Mother repeats, “as if this were part of a song.” An unsung harmonic-minor scale. The Mother’s un-played cello.)
As I hinted above, we say “I see” to mean “I understand.” “My view” means “my way of thinking.” “Look” stands in for “pay attention”; “take a look” for “examine” or “consider.” Ishiguro takes part in this equation of vision with reason, but I suspect he is also making a commentary on it. Klara and the Sun asks what is gained, and what is lost, when we privilege sight over other senses as a way of knowing.
HUMAN OR AI?
Sarah Day-O’Connell
Professor of Music