11/30/2022 0 Comments Pagen culrsBoth films also, as David Opie argues, depart from conventions of the horror genre by relying on lightness instead ofĭarkness to inspire terror in their viewers. At the level of plot, both films follow the sinister motivations behind the May Day celebrations of isolated northern European communities. With Klara’s religious devotion to “the Sun” propelling its narrative forward, Ishiguro’s dystopian novel evokes a longer tradition of folk horror that dramatizes the ritual sun worship of pagan cults, like Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult classic The Wicker Man and Ari Aster’s more recent film Midsommar (2019). As Judith Shulevitz writes in a review for The Atlantic, Klara seems nothing short of an “improbable priestess of something very like an ancient nature cult.” When Josie does miraculously recover, she does so after being bathed in a burst of blinding sunlight Klara is, for reasons she insists she cannot explain to humans, certain that “the Sun” is responsible for the miracle. But as the narrative moves on, it becomes clear that Klara’s fixation with the sun is as spiritual as it is physical: after she is purchased by a frail young girl named Josie and her overprotective mother, Chrissie, Klara frequently prays to the sun to heal Josie, whose death seems imminent as she battles with a grave, unnamed illness. We quickly learn that Klara belongs to an older generation of AFs that rely on solar energy to function, which explains her desire to stand in direct sunlight. Stationed in a far corner of the AF store in which she has spent most of her existence, Klara sees the outside world with an almost childlike sense of wonder, and longs to bask in the sun’s rays, often craning to lean her face as far into the direct sunlight as possible in order to take in “his nourishment.”ĭespite what the novel’s title might lead us to expect, the precise nature of Klara’s relationship to the sun is one thread that the novel leaves partially unresolved by its end. What, or whom, are we willing to sacrifice to preserve the order of things? Kazuo Ishiguro confronts this question in his newest novel, Klara and the Sun, which opens with a description of a bright, bustling sidewalk from the perspective of Klara, a human-like “Artificial Friend” (or “AF”) waiting to be purchased and carried off to a permanent home.
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