What happens in Part Three of Klara and the Sun?
Part Three introduces a notable change in Klara's life: she has moved out of the store to live in the house with Josie and her mother (the Mother). The daily routines of this household replace the street-level views she once experienced from the shop window. Josie's health noticeably declines—her episodes of weakness and pallor become more frequent and concerning—while the Mother pursues a mysterious plan regarding Josie's "continuation," suggesting something far more significant than just medical treatment. Klara accompanies Josie to meet the scientist Mr. Capaldi, whose studio is filled with portraits related to this plan. This encounter deeply unsettles Klara; she observes the Mother's expressions and Josie's body language for hints, analyzing human emotions with her usual methodical precision. Meanwhile, Rick—Josie's neighbor and closest friend—continues to visit, and the bond between the two teenagers intensifies, feeling both delicate and urgent given Josie's condition. Klara, always the dedicated observer, starts to privately appeal to the Sun for Josie's healing, her devotion taking on a quality akin to religious practice. The section ends with the household's anxiety lingering, the details of Capaldi's project still kept from Klara—and the reader.
Analysis
Kazuo Ishiguro uses Klara's limited yet hyper-observant perspective to create a deeply unsettling effect in Part Three. Since Klara processes her surroundings in discrete, almost pixelated observations — she describes her vision literally breaking apart under stress — readers feel the dread of this section indirectly, through gaps and misinterpretations rather than straightforward revelations. This is a hallmark of Ishiguro's style: the unreliable narrator who misleads not through deceit but through innocence.
The visit from the Capaldis serves as a turning point for the section. Ishiguro keeps the true nature of the "portrait" project vague, but the details he provides — the Mother's controlled grief, Capaldi's clinical cheerfulness, and the eerie resemblance being noted — gradually build the novel's central ethical horror surrounding themes of substitution and identity. Klara's struggle to articulate her discomfort reflects the reader's growing unease.
The motifs of light and nourishment, introduced earlier, become even more pronounced here. Klara's prayers to the Sun are presented earnestly; Ishiguro expects readers to hold both the pathos of a machine's genuine faith and the philosophical dilemma of whether sincerity requires consciousness. The Sun's "nourishment" also serves as a metaphor for love — sustaining, non-transferable, and indifferent to who deserves it.
Rick and Josie's relationship brings a warmth that contrasts with the novel's cooler tones, making their scenes even more poignant. Their interactions carry the somber weight of an elegy already in the making, as Ishiguro weaves tenderness with the awareness that something precious is being preserved in the face of impending loss.
Key quotes from Part Three
“I'd been thinking about the RPO building, and wondering if the Sun might be persuaded to send his nourishment to Josie in a more concentrated way.”
Klara articulates her private theology of solar intercession, framing her devotion to Josie in the transactional logic of prayer.
“She's a good AF. She observes and she remembers. But she doesn't understand, and she never will.”
Capaldi dismisses Klara's interiority to the Mother, crystallising the novel's central tension between behaviour and genuine inner life.
“I kept watching Josie's face, and I could see she was trying to be brave, and that the effort of it was making her more tired.”
Klara reads Josie's performance of wellness with characteristic precision, the observation quietly devastating in its understatement.
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Create an accountSign inVocabulary in Part Three
- substitution
- The act of replacing a person — specifically, Klara being asked to study and replicate Josie so completely she could stand in for Josie if Josie died.
- portrait
- A painted likeness of Josie commissioned by the Mother, which carries deeper significance as part of the plan to preserve Josie's identity beyond death.
- continuation
- The idea of a person's identity or essence persisting beyond their physical death, central to the Mother's plan involving Klara as Josie's double.
- Capaldi
- The scientist or engineer who designed and built Klara, and who is consulted about whether an AF can truly capture and replicate a human being's inner self.
- heart
- Used in the novel not anatomically but to mean the irreducible inner essence or soul of a person, debated as something an AF can or cannot possess.