Klara And The Sun Under The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

Klara and the Sun is the latest work by the Japanese-British writer and 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Kazuo Ishiguro.Since its publication in 2021,it has attracted a high level of attention among scholars worldwide.The work continued Kazuo Ishiguro’s signature character narrative approach,with a look at how Klara,a solar-powered artificial intelligence robot,intervened in human life from her perspective in an internal focalization way.In this novel,Kazuo Ishiguro explored the boundaries of the human heart and raised a thought-provoking ethical question: Can machines replace humans?In recent times,with the continuous progress of science and technology,new breakthroughs in cloning technology,organ transplantation,genetic engineering and artificial intelligence have emerged.As the post-human era gradually emerges from the mist,the subjectivity of human beings has become more and more blurred on the contrary.In the face of the coming situation,traditional humanism is facing a great challenge.In the wake of the narrowing of the distance between technology and human,the ethical issues between them become more and more acute.Based on this,this study attempts to analyze the ethical issues in Klara and the Sun from the perspective of ethical literary criticism,to interpret Klara’s refusal to become a substitute for Josie,at the same time tries to reveal Kazuo Ishiguro’s understanding of the ethical responsibilities that human beings should take for both themselves and non-human existences,and to contribute to the interpretation of Chinese discourse in foreign literary classics.The paper is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is an introduction,which briefly introduces Kazuo Ishiguro and Klara and the Sun,and explains the research questions,the significance of the study,theoretical foundation,and the structure of the article,along with the literature review,which combs the research directions of Kazuo Ishiguro’s works and the current hotspots of research on Klara and the Sun.The second chapter focuses on the analysis of Klara’s ethical conflicts,explaining the ethical conflicts that AF,represented by Klara,is in,both in terms of human society and the family in which Klara lives in.The third chapter develops an analysis of Klara’s ethical identity.Literary ethics believes that ethical identity is a prerequisite for evaluating the ethical choices of characters,and that different ethical identities lead to different choices when facing ethical issues.Through a close reading of the text,the study analyzes Klara’s ethical identity transformation from an observer to an imitator,and to a substitute furtherly,and at last a rebel in the story.Later in this chapter,the motivation of this ethical identity transformation and how it affects Klara’s ethical choices is revealed.Chapter four focuses on the analysis of Klara’s ethical choices and the ethical wisdom embodied in them.Ethical literary criticism takes the concept of ethical choice as the basis of its theory.Ethical choice refers to the choice of two or more moral options,and different choices lead to different results.Therefore,different choices have different ethical contents,and different ethical choices point to different values.Klara’s ethical choice to become Josie’s substitute,the central conflict in the novel,undergoes a transition from approval to rebellion.By analyzing Klara’s ethical wisdom in making ethical choices,an attempt is made to discover the value judgments embodied in it and its instructive role in the post-human era.Chapter five concludes the whole text.The thesis argues,firstly,that Klara’s ethical identity is influenced by human influences and self-perceptions,and therefore has a duality.The instability of her ethical identity also has an impact on her ethical choice judgments.Secondly,the ethical choices of characters in literature can be greatly influenced by their ethical identities.Klara’s ethical choice of the ethical knot of becoming Josie’s substitute is formally caused by the change of her ethical identity.Thirdly,the analysis of Klara’s ethical choices reveals two kinds of ethical wisdom embodied in Klara.First,Klara has complete insight into the nature of human beings and realized that recognizing the human heart is irreplaceable.Second,Klara has a completely altruistic spirit,and she made the core values of humanism written by Kazuo Ishiguro in the posthuman era realizable on a non-human subject.