Previous
Foil
Definition of Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved directly or indirectly, by making... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the... read full definition
Part One
Explanation and Analysis—Beggar Man:
The novel’s earliest moments of foreshadowing take place immediately outside the store display window. Having assumed that Beggar Man and his dog are dead one afternoon, Klara expresses her surprise when they spring back to life the next day in Part 1:
The next morning the grid went up and it was a most splendid day. The Sun was pouring his nourishment onto the street and into the buildings, and when I looked over to the spot where Beggar Man and the dog had died, I saw they weren’t dead at all—that a special kind of nourishment from the Sun had saved them. Beggar Man wasn’t yet on his feet, but he was smiling and sitting up, his back against the blank doorway, one leg stretched out, the other bent so he could rest his arm on his knee.
The astonished AF can barely contain her surprise at this revival. The Beggar Man’s recovery provides a resurrection-like allegory that testifies to the force of the Sun’s goodness. In projecting her dependence on solar power, Klara decides that the Sun’s “nourishment” must have been what cured the Beggar Man. This moment links the Sun’s light to its healing, restorative powers, and it crucially reinforces her belief in the Sun as a benevolent deity.
The Beggar Man’s recovery informs the novel’s main plotline, in which Klara decides to ask the Sun for aid in curing Josie. As Josie struggles with her illness, Klara brings “several speculations together” as she prays towards the Sun for his help. Her memory of the Beggar Man forms the linchpin of her scattered reasoning. In recalling that the Cootings Machine had preceded the Beggar Man’s “death,” Josie decides that the machine was to blame for his weakness, and—by analogy—Josie’s illness. The early store window episode furnishes the template for her plan.
The scene foreshadows the outcome as surely as it does Klara’s thought processes. By quirk of coincidence or actual miracle, Josie improbably recovers in the way of the Beggar Man. Klara raises the blinds as the sun briefly peeks through the cloud cover, rays falling upon Josie’s face. Ishiguro’s foreshadowing neatly bookends the novel with two triumphant recoveries, and they also mirror each other. Klara happens to find a home with Josie just after the first miracle. By contrast, she loses Josie after the second.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Children's Promises:
Klara and the Sun introduces its central anxiety through an early moment of foreshadowing. Resolved to keep herself available for Josie, Klara resists another customer’s advances by refusing to “gaze to her or smile.” The Manager chides her in turn:
Children make promises all the time. They come to the window, they promise all kinds of things. They promise to come back, they ask you not to let anyone else take you away. It happens all the time. But more often than not, the child never comes back. Or worse, the child comes back and ignores the poor AF who’s waited, and instead chooses another. It’s just the way children are.
Josie proves the Manager wrong; she returns to the store, heart set on bringing Klara home. But this warning—of promises unkept and too-fragile assurances—haunts Klara through the rest of the novel. The fear of abandonment circulates within her subconscious, rearing its head whenever she senses disappointment from her owner, as when she refuses commands during Josie’s interaction meeting or visits Morgan’s Falls without her. It returns, perhaps most devastatingly, at the moment when Josie herself suggests that she should have bought a B3 instead. After the interaction meeting, Klara admits that “Manager’s words came into my mind, her warning about children who made promises at the window, yet never returned, or worse still, returned and chose another AF altogether.”
Owner and AF eventually reunite. Rifts get mended, and Josie even recovers, but they ultimately parts ways. Josie’s promise to “never let anything bad happen to you” gets broken as she leaves for college and lets Klara end up in the Yard. In a troubling reprise, the Manager’s warning—what is Klara’s deepest fear—comes true. The “child never comes back,” and Klara spends the rest of her days alone. The novel’s conclusion strikes with a sense of eerie fulfillment. More broadly, though, it questions the place of loyalty or affection in a society so committed to exchange, efficiency, and commodification.
Related Themes:
