Capitalized Pollution and Inhabitability Critique in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article delves into the environmental consciousness and criticism present in Kazuo Ishiguro’s eighth novel Klara and the Sun. Ishiguro depicts AI robots reliant on solar energy, with smoke being a significant obstacle for both these robots and humans to obtain sufficient sunlight for survival. This allegorical metaphor is revealed through the perspective of the naïve narrator, Klara, who notes that the source of smoke is the capitalized Pollution emitted from the Cootings Machine, a prototype of steam engine. By associating the novel with British environmental history, this article investigates Ishiguro’s representation and reflection of pollution, employing modernity theories on the environment by Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, Bruno Latour, and Timothy Morton. I argue that the novel not only inherits the British literary tradition of smoke representation since the era of Romanticism, but also imbues this literary motif with new meanings in posthuman society. By doing so, Ishiguro critiques the human behaviors that have challenged the well-being of both planet Earth and all its inhabitants, and urges immediate action to prevent an ultimate uninhabitability of this planet.