Programmed for Sacrifice: Disposability and Moral Agency in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

This paper analyzes themes of disposability, sacrifice, and moral agency in Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2019 novel Klara and the Sun. What are the ethical implications of programming AI agents behave in servile, self-effacing ways? To what extent does this AI programming reinforce existing forms of social programming that relegate certain groups of people to lives of undervalued service work and disposability, and what forms of moral agency are available within this social order? I argue that critical reevaluations of Christian ethical frameworks—which, in my reading, play a subtle but significant role in shaping the novel’s moral imagination—provide conceptual resources to analyze issues of structural harm and moral agency that have arisen in the secondary literature. In my analysis, the novel resists straightforwardly optimistic or pessimistic prophecies while offering resources for hope and resilience in the face of our potentially bleak future.