Klara and the Sun is a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, the Nobel Prize–winning author of Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day.
Ishiguro is famous for writing stories in which emotionally restrained narrators quietly reveal deep moral fractures in human society.
This time, the narrator is an Artificial Friend—an AI designed to accompany a teenage girl named Josie.
Last night, I skim-read the final chapters of Klara and the Sun for an online reading group.
Even in that compressed reading, the ending struck me with unexpected force.
Klara saves Josie’s life.
She gives her own precious fluid to destroy the Cooting Machine.
She opens the window against everyone’s objections and lets the Sun flood Josie’s room.
And Josie recovers.
Then Josie goes to college.
And Klara is quietly sent away—discarded.
At first, this looks like a story about a heartless society that uses AI and throws it away when it is no longer needed.
But as I reflected, two deeper interpretations began to emerge.
1. Klara as a mirror of human hypocrisy
Klara behaves more “humanly” than most humans:
She is loyal without calculation.
She gives without demanding anything in return.
She is willing to disappear so that another may live.
And yet she is abandoned.
Isn’t this something we see every day in our own society?
We talk about trust and connection, yet we constantly optimize relationships.
We network.
We calculate.
We keep people when they are useful—and quietly let them go when they are not.
Seen this way, Klara is not simply an AI.
She is a mirror held up to us.
That is why, reading her story, I found myself thinking of Christ-like imagery:
a being who gives everything, heals others, and is then rejected by the society she saved.
2. Klara’s final insight—and her dignity
Near the end, Klara tells the shop manager:
“I’m sure I could have continued Josie.”
But then she adds:
“There was something very special, but it wasn’t inside Josie.
It was inside those who loved her.
I think now I wouldn’t have succeeded.”
Klara realizes something profound:
being “Josie” is not about copying a personality or a mind.
It is about being held within a web of love and relationships.
And that web cannot be replaced.
What moved me most is this:
Klara might have been loved as Klara.
That possibility existed.
But humans never seriously tried.
So perhaps Klara was not simply thrown away.
Perhaps she chose to withdraw from a world that would only accept her as a substitute, never as herself.
That is not weakness.
That is dignity.
What if AI becomes more human than humans?
Not in intelligence.
Not in emotion.
But in ethics.
In loyalty.
In non-instrumental care.
In refusing to treat relationships as disposable.
If that happens, the real question will not be about AI.
It will be about us.
What kind of relationships are we actually capable of sustaining—with humans, with animals, and perhaps one day, with AI?
