Analysis of Klara and the Sun From the Perspective of Defamilarization

Abstract

Klara and the Sun is a dystopian novel published by the British author Kazuo Ishiguro in 2017, which presents the defamiliarized narrative perspective of an android called Klara. Set somewhere in the near future, the story follows Klara’s perspective as an “Artificial Friend” to a young, sick girl who has had her genetics altered for better academic performance. On the basis of Victor Shklovsky’s theory of the defamiliarization, this paper analyzes the dilemma of the human existence, as well as the uniqueness and fragility of the human nature from Klara’s defamiliarized perspective, which reflects Ishiguro’s deep concerns about the human existence and the potential crisis of the human society.