Klara and the Sun: Unreliable Narrator 1 key example

She observes the details but fails to react to them, aware of surface realities but largely oblivious to the ethical concerns that underly them. Her robotic outlook towards the world blinds her to its elisions and even subtler evasions. In her all-too-trusting naivete, Klara overlooks the many troubling issues that surround her. Miss Helen reveals that the Father holds “fascist” viewpoints, and Rick develops surveillance drones with “data-gathering capacity,” but these things just briefly dance along the peripheries of Klara’s account. All that should merit Klara’s deepest criticism does not. The AF merely oversteps these knee-jerk concerns by striking a pose of journalistic neutrality.

This ingenuousness sometimes comes to a fault. If Klara finds strength in her faith, she is equally prone to over-acquiescence. At times she is so innocently trusting that she becomes morally undiscriminating. She assumes the better of Melania Housekeeper’s hostility towards her. But she obeys the Mother’s wishes to their terrifying extremes, accepting the ethically fraught duty of substituting herself for Josie. Lacking firm ideological or moral viewpoints of her own, she allows Mr. Capaldi to dictate her actions.

Klara’s unsettling deference underscores a telling difference between humans and AFs. What is absent in the AF reveals what is present in the reader. The fact that Klara fails to take issue with the Mother’s aggressive condescension or the Father’s political leanings suggests something “special” in humans, after all.  Klara doesn’t share with the reader the same moral concerns because she does not understand them. Her status as a robot has equipped her with the ability to detect voice pitches and replicate gaits, to accommodate any and all of her owners’ potential wishes. In the same way, it limits her, too.