Machines, Nature, and the Human: An Ecocritical Reading of Artificial Intelligence in Selected Contemporary Fiction

Abstract

This article presents an ecocritical reading of two novels by Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (2021) and Never Let Me Go (2005), examining how both texts construct artificial beings as ethical subjects embedded in ecological networks of interdependence and care. Drawing on Timothy Morton's concept of the mesh and dark ecology, Stacy Alaimo's trans-corporeality, and Rosi Braidotti's post-humanist ethics, the study applies close reading and literary analysis to explore the ethical implications of artificial life in Ishiguro's fiction. The analysis demonstrates that both novels use first-person narration to position their artificial narrators as moral subjects, that they approach the natural and artificial boundary in contrasting but complementary ways, and that they foreground four dominant ethical concerns: consciousness, exploitation, care, and disposability. Together, the two novels constitute a sustained literary meditation on the ethical consequences of anthropocentrism and the failure of human civilization to extend moral consideration to the beings it creates and discards.