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Stelle:
„Though it might look impolite, I didn’t turn.“
Anmerkung:
Klara attends a meeting of kids, „friends“ of Josie’s. Josie feels uncomfortable in the meeting, and even more so her friend Rick, whom Josie begged to attend the meeting. Klara struggles to cope with the social interaction of the friends, she can’t fathom what is going on, too much background information missing; nor can the reader, sharing her perspective. Klara refuses to obey an order or a request of one of Josie’s friends, who wants to test her capabilities, „freezes“, swamped with data she can’t process.
I don’t think it’s the processing problem. She acts in a way similar to how she acted to the „wrong“ girl in the shop – she pretends to be less competent than she really is. She refuses to be treated like an object by someone who is not Josie. More interestingly, later in the scene she even refuses an order from Josie – I think it suggests that she is beginning to develop a desire for autonomy, and also – self-respect. Those kids are terrible! And Klara sees it the moment she walks in (again, the distorted, fractured vision allows her to see more than her ordinary clear view). Her „freezing“ may be compared with a more vivid moment of resistance in Machines Like Me, when Adam breaks Charlie’s wrist, refusing to be turned off. Of course, the moment is much more ambiguous in Ishiguro’s novel – it may be resistance to evil, rather than to objetification. But I think it’s there all the same.