Harmonies and Discords: Rhythmanalysing Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun
Harmonies and Discords: Rhythmanalysing Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

Summary/Abstract: Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis reveals how cyclical and linear patterns structure everyday life. By distinguishing organic rhythms from social and mechanized schedules, it introduces eurhythmia, arrhythmia, and polyrhythmia to describe harmonious or discordant temporal interactions. Rooted in dialectical and phenomenological thought, it demands an embodied, sensory engagement: the analyst “listens” to environments to discern underlying rhythms. In literary studies, rhythmanalysis extends narratological, structuralist, and multidisciplinary traditions by focusing on lived, sensory narrative rhythms. Building on applications in urban studies and sociology, critics have used close reading and digital mapping to trace tempo patterns. By examining repetition and variation across organic and mechanical registers, this approach uncovers how fiction choreographs pacing, mood, and thematic resonance in various genres and historical periods. This study applies rhythmanalysis to Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and The Sun, reading its protagonist, an Artificial Friend, as a rhythmanalyst. Through Klara’s relations with the Sun’s cycle, her urban surroundings, and human routines, we identify moments of eurhythmia, where natural and social rhythms align; and arrhythmia, where mechanical schedules disrupt organic flows. These polyrhythmic intersections in domestic and public spaces reveal the novel’s critique of artificial temporalities. Carefully analyzing Klara’s evolving embodiment, from her household sacrifices and experiments with mechanized “lifting,” to her final confinement in the attic, demonstrates how Ishiguro dramatizes the tension between cyclical renewal and imposed linearity. Klara’s journey shows that personhood arises through active engagement with spatial rhythms.

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