The Partially Sighted Robot
An uncannily accurate portrayal of partial sight... from an AI robot
I'm not the crusading type when it comes to my poor eyesight. But I do think the portrayal of sight loss in literature is fairly woeful. There's a bang of worthiness off it, an over-determination to get a message across. Blind people are portrayed as having heroic powers and pick up smells from miles away.
Curiously enough, the best portrayal of partial sight I've ever come across in a novel was of a character who wasn't human. It was a robot called Klara, the central character in Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun.
Photo Description: The words Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro appear in black writing on a red background. In the middle of the book cover is a grey square, and on the right-hand side of that square you can see a glimpse of sun.
Klara was created to be a companion to a teenager girl, and artificial intelligence gives her human-like qualities.
Two Passages on Partial Sight
There are two passages in the book which I found to be an uncannily accurate description of partial sight, though I know that isn't what the author intended.
In the first passage, Klara is walking across a field in search of the sun. She finds walking across the field treacherous, full of lumps and bumps, and she is a little apprehensive.
This is what it feels like to walk across a field when you have poor depth perception. This is what it feels like when I walk across a field.
In the second passage, Klara becomes agitated when a plan she devises goes a little awry. She is in a restaurant and everything she sees is distorted. People bend into strange shapes and squiggly lines.
This doesn't quite happen to me, but when I am agitated, excited or embarrassed, my eyes start leaping around and it becomes harder to see. The world is a little out of focus, a little pixilated.
Who'd have thought I'd identify so strongly with a robot, and a fictional one at that. But she sees the world differently, and so do I.
If anyone has comments on the portrayal of disability in literature, Klara and the Sun or any other thoughts, you can email derbhile@writewordseditorial.ie or message me on 0876959799.