Klara and the Sun: Josie's Home, Social World and the Portrait Plan
Inside Josie’s home, social gatherings, private imitation and a portrait project become tests of who belongs and who can be replaced. Follow how care develops into both action and control.
Home as a social stage
When Klara moves from the store to Josie's home in Part Two, the setting changes but evaluation does not disappear. Klara must read a new household made up of Josie, Mother and Melania, while the nearby barn becomes a place where she interprets the Sun's power. The home also opens onto a wider social world in which status controls who belongs.
Three Part Two moments establish that pattern:
| Moment | Literal orientation | Interpretive pressure |
|---|---|---|
| Klara's arrival | Klara learns the household's people, routines and spaces. | Selection from the store has not made her an equal family member; she is welcomed and observed at the same time. |
| The interaction meeting | Lifted children gather at Josie's home to practise social interaction. They handle or test Klara and treat Rick as an outsider. | A meeting intended to create social confidence reproduces the hierarchy it is supposed to overcome. |
| Morgan's Falls | Mother takes Klara to Morgan’s Falls while Josie stays behind; she privately asks Klara to imitate Josie. | Social imitation becomes a private test of whether a person can be reproduced. |
The interaction meeting is more than evidence that some children behave badly. The purpose of the event matters. If the children are being brought together to learn how to relate to others, their treatment of Klara and Rick reveals a contradiction: the privileged group practises socialisation by deciding who counts less.
Here is a modelled evidence-to-analysis chain:
- Claim: the meeting exposes a hierarchy of belonging rather than creating genuine friendship.
- Precise event: the lifted children treat Klara as an object to be tested, while Rick's unlifted status leaves him vulnerable to dismissal.
- Inference: the group places both an AF and an unlifted human outside its secure circle, although for different reasons.
- Development: Rick's willingness to recognise and protect Klara makes his conduct more humane than that of the socially advantaged children.
- Judgement: Ishiguro therefore separates technological or social advantage from moral worth.
A relational interpretation treats Rick’s recognition of Klara as morally significant, in contrast with the lifted children’s conduct. That view is useful because it makes the scene relational. Klara's humanity is not settled by a label; the children's actions reveal what kinds of recognition they are willing to offer.
An alternative emphasis is possible. The meeting may expose the children's anxiety as well as their cruelty: a competitive system has taught them to perform status in front of one another. This does not excuse their behaviour, but it moves the argument from individual unpleasantness to the social structure shaping the group.
At a meeting intended to develop social confidence, lifted children are testing Klara. Rick is an unlifted guest.
Source A
Klara and the Sun
By Kazuo Ishiguro
[1] ‘Okay,’ Danny said. ‘Then we’ll do Scrub’s test. Just to please him. Phil, come here and help me swing her. Scrub, stay where you are, get ready to catch. This is okay with you, Josie?’
[2] Behind me, Josie remained silent, but a girl’s voice said: ‘Throwing AFs across the room. That’s evil.’
[3] ‘What’s evil about it? They’re designed to deal with it.’
[4] ‘That’s not the point,’ the girl’s voice said. ‘It’s just nasty.’
[5] ‘You’re being soft,’ Danny said. ‘Phil, take her arms. I’ll get the legs.’
[6] ‘What’s that you have there in your pocket?’ It was Rick who’d spoken and the room went silent.
[7] ‘What d’you say, friend?’
[8] Rick moved through the guests, stopping a little to my right. He showed no fear as he pointed at the breast pocket of Danny’s shirt. I’d noticed the object earlier – a soft toy dog small enough for the pocket. I’d seen children of seven and eight carrying such toys in their pockets when they’d come into the store.
[9] As everyone shifted positions to see what Rick was pointing at, Danny raised both hands to cover his pocket.
[10] ‘A pet object, I’d say,’ Rick said.
[11] ‘It’s not a pet object,’ Danny said.
[12] ‘I’d say it’s your pet object. To help you feel calmer at gatherings like this one.’
[13] ‘What’s this bullshit? Who asked you anything?’
[14] ‘If it’s really nothing so special, perhaps you wouldn’t mind showing it to me.’ Rick held out his hand. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of it.’
[15] ‘Whether it’s anything special or not, it’s none of your business.’
[16] ‘Do please let me borrow it. Just for a minute.’
[17] ‘It’s nothing to me, but I wouldn’t hand it over to you.’
[18] ‘No? Not even a little peek?’
[19] ‘I’d never lend you anything. Why would I? You shouldn’t even be here.’
Notes
Part Two. The numbers label the supplied paragraphs.
Source B
Klara and the Sun
By Kazuo Ishiguro
[1] The voice belonged to an adult, and the young people around me shrank back as the woman came striding into the room. ‘And Danny’s right,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t be here at all.’
[2] Then the Mother came hurrying in after her, and I saw other adults looking through the doorway into the Open Plan.
[3] ‘Come on, Sara,’ the Mother was saying. ‘We don’t interfere, remember?’
[4] The Mother put an arm around the Sara woman, who continued to glare at Rick.
[5] ‘Come on, Sara. Play by the rules. It’s for the kids to sort out.’
[6] Sara continued to look angry, but allowed herself to be led away out of the room and into the murmur of adult voices in the hall. One of the voices said: ‘It’s the only way they’ll learn,’ and then the adult voices receded, and there was silence in the Open Plan.
Notes
Part Two. The numbers label the supplied paragraphs.
Source C
Klara and the Sun
By Kazuo Ishiguro
[1] ‘I suppose they have a point though,’ he said. ‘I don’t belong here. This is a meeting for lifted kids.’
[2] ‘Rick came because Josie very much wanted him to come.’
Notes
Part Two. The numbers label the supplied paragraphs.
Imitation, grief and the family
At Morgan's Falls, Mother asks Klara to imitate Josie's manner. The request is especially disturbing because it occurs in a family setting shaped by Mother's grief for Sal, Josie's dead sister. Josie is absent from the trip. The private test lets the reader see Mother exploring a possibility that threatens Josie’s uniqueness, without attributing knowledge of the test or a reaction to Josie.
Two interpretations need to remain in tension:
- An act of objectification: Mother turns Josie into a pattern of gestures that Klara might reproduce. She also treats Klara as an instrument whose value lies in accurate performance.
- An act shaped by fear: Mother's earlier loss makes her desperate to discover whether another loss could be survived. Grief explains why the test matters to her, even though it does not remove the harm done to Josie or Klara.
A strong Section C argument does not have to choose between "Mother loves Josie" and "Mother objectifies Josie." The sharper judgement is that fear of bereavement changes how Mother expresses love: protection begins to resemble control, and preserving Josie begins to resemble replacing her.
This scene also changes the best evidence choice for later writing. For an argument about social hierarchy, the interaction meeting is the stronger Part Two example because it directly stages lifted, unlifted and AF status. For an argument about replacement, Morgan's Falls is stronger because it links imitation, family grief and Mother’s private experiment before Capaldi's full proposal is revealed.
The development can be expressed without quotation:
| Earlier test | Later development | Resulting interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Mother privately tests Klara's ability to imitate Josie. | Capaldi proposes that Klara could continue Josie through an artificial body. | What first appears to be an uncomfortable family experiment becomes preparation for substitution. |
Notice the limit of that claim. Morgan's Falls prepares the later disclosure; it does not prove that the replacement would succeed. Mother’s uncertainty and the project’s secrecy all keep success ethically and practically unresolved.
Rick, the barn and unequal futures
Part Three places Rick's exclusion beside Klara's first barn bargain. The two strands look different, but both concern characters with little control over institutions that shape Josie's future.
Rick is intelligent and capable, yet his unlifted status threatens his educational prospects, including access to Atlas Brookings. His ability cannot simply cancel a classification produced by family decisions and social advantage. Miss Helen's anxiety about contacts and influence shows that the system rewards access as well as talent; the later failed appeal to Vance confirms how personal gatekeepers preserve this inequality.
Klara responds to powerlessness in another way. With Rick's help, she reaches the barn and petitions the Sun for special help with Josie's illness. She connects the Sun's earlier apparent act of restoration with a bargain in which she will act against Pollution. This is reasoning from limited observation, but it is also purposeful action: Klara constructs a way to help when human medicine and social institutions offer her no authority.
| Pressure | Response | What the response reveals |
|---|---|---|
| Rick is classified as unlifted. | He and Miss Helen seek routes through education and personal influence. | A supposedly merit-based future is controlled by purchased status and gatekeepers. |
| Josie's illness worsens. | Klara turns to the Sun and forms a private bargain. | Her care creates agency, but her limited evidence makes the bargain uncertain. |
Klara's belief should not be flattened into either foolish superstition or confirmed divine truth. Her solar dependence gives the Sun a real material importance in her experience, while her limited perspective encourages her to infer intention from patterns. The uncertainty matters: she acts with commitment before she can know the result.
Ishiguro has explained that developments in gene editing, including CRISPR, made him imagine a harsher meritocracy in which wealthy families could purchase further advantage. This context sharpens Rick's position: if enhancement is treated as evidence of merit, inherited privilege can disguise itself as personal achievement. It does not mean that lifting is definitively CRISPR; the novel leaves the fictional process unspecified.
An ethical context leads to the same scene from a different direction. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics argues that heritable genome intervention should not increase disadvantage, discrimination or social division, while the World Health Organization stresses governance and inequity alongside possible benefits. Applied carefully, these ideas make Rick's exclusion a question about distribution: who receives an enhancement, who carries its risks, and who is denied opportunity afterwards?
The passages move from Mother and Klara’s private trip to the proposed continuation and Klara’s later reflection.
Source A
Klara and the Sun
By Kazuo Ishiguro
[1] ‘I think it was right we didn’t bring Josie today,’ she said. ‘She wasn’t well. But now we’re sitting here like this, I do miss her.’ She looked around, turning to look at the waterfall. Then she turned back and her gaze went past me, to the passers-by, the dogs and AFs. ‘Okay, Klara. Since Josie isn’t here, I want you to be Josie. Just for a little while. Since we’re up here.’
[2] ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’
[3] ‘You did it for me once before. The day we got you from the store. You haven’t forgotten, have you?’
[4] ‘I remember, of course.’
[5] ‘I mean, you haven’t forgotten how to do it. Walk like Josie.’
[6] ‘I will be able to walk in her manner. In fact now I know her better, and have seen her in more situations, I’ll be able to give a more sophisticated imitation. However…’
[7] ‘However what?’
[8] ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean however.’
[9] The Mother looked at me, then said: ‘Good. But I wasn’t going to ask you to do that walk anyway. We’re sitting here, the two of us. A nice spot, a nice day. And I’d been looking forward to having Josie here. So I’m asking you, Klara. You’re smart. If she were sitting here instead of you right now, how would she sit? I don’t think she’d sit the way you’re sitting.’
[10] ‘No. Josie would be more…like this.’
[11] The Mother leaned closer over the tabletop and her eyes narrowed till her face filled eight boxes, leaving only the peripheral boxes for the waterfall, and for a moment it felt to me her expression varied between one box and the next. In one, for instance, her eyes were laughing cruelly, but in the next they were filled with sadness. The sounds of the waterfall, the children and the dogs all faded to a hush to make way for whatever the Mother was about to say.
[12] ‘That’s good. That’s very good. But now I want you to move. Do something. Don’t stop being Josie. Let me see you move a little.’
[13] I smiled in the way Josie would, settling into a slouching, informal posture.
[14] ‘That’s good. Now say something. Let me hear you speak.’
[15] ‘I’m sorry. I’m not sure…’
[16] ‘No. That’s Klara. I want Josie.’
Notes
Part Two. The numbers label the supplied paragraphs.
Source B
Klara and the Sun
By Kazuo Ishiguro
[1] ‘How can you say that? What do you know about it? You’re just a kid. A kid who loves life and believes everything can be fixed. What do you know about it?’
[2] ‘It’s okay, Mom, don’t worry. I’ll get well soon. I know how it’ll happen too.’
[3] ‘What? What are you saying? You think you know more than the doctors? More than I do? Your sister made promises too. But she couldn’t keep them. Don’t you do the same.’
[4] ‘But Mom. Sal was sick with something different. I’m going to get well.’
Notes
Part Two. The numbers label the supplied paragraphs.
Source C
Klara and the Sun
By Kazuo Ishiguro
[1] ‘You still don’t quite understand,’ Mr Capaldi said. Although he was standing there before me, his voice seemed to come from the edges of my vision, because all I could see still were the Mother’s eyes. ‘Let me explain to her, Chrissie. It’ll be easier coming from me. Klara, we’re not asking you to train the new Josie. We’re asking you to become her. That Josie you saw up there, as you noticed, is empty. If the day comes – I hope it doesn’t, but if it does – we want you to inhabit that Josie up there with everything you’ve learned.’
[2] ‘You wish me to inhabit her?’
[3] ‘Chrissie chose you carefully with that in mind. She believed you to be the one best equipped to learn Josie. Not just superficially, but deeply, entirely. Learn her till there’s no difference between the first Josie and the second.’
[4] ‘Henry’s telling you this now,’ the Mother said, and suddenly she was no longer partitioned, ‘like it was carefully planned. But it was never like that. I didn’t even know if I believed any of this would work. Maybe once I believed it could. But seeing that portrait up there, I don’t know any more.’
Notes
Part Four. The numbers label the supplied paragraphs.
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