I’d decided to read David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas prior to hearing about the film adaptation of it but I hadn’t read it until recently when one day I saw a trailer for the movie online and figured I’d better get on it if I want to have it finished by the time the film hits theatres. I went into the book knowing nothing about it.
Cloud Atlas tells the stories of six people which take place at various times between the mid-19th century and some far off point in the future after human civilization has collapsed. The first six chapters are told chronologically. One through five tell roughly the first two-thirds of the stories of the first five characters. The sixth chapter is the whole of the last characters tale and then we move backwards in time with the other stories being finished.
The first story is “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing”. Ewing is a notary who is on the Chatham Islands in the Pacific and is making his way back to America. As the title indicates, this chapter is written in the form of a journal. It’s a sad story which introduces the reader to what is surely the main theme of the book - the cruelty of man. The natives of the Chathams are the Moriori and they are, by Ewing’s estimate, the most peaceful people of the whole of the Earth. First came the white men who kill all of the seals and then subjugate the Moriori. Then the white men bring over some of the native of New Zealand, the Maori, who promptly commit genocide on their fellow Pacific islanders. Ewing heads back to America but is taken in by a conman and nearly pays with his life.
The next story is “Letters from Zedelghem” which takes place in 1931. A young man named Robert Frobisher writes to his friend and lover, Rufus Sixsmith, about his experiences as an amanuensis to a composer named Vyvyan Ayrs who resides in Belgium. Being young, Frobisher is cocky and rather full of himself. He takes a chance and shows up on Ayrs’ doorstep offering his services and he is taken up on his offer. The two have a tempestuous relationship with the student wishing to supersede the master but the master isn’t quite ready to step down. Biding his time, Frobisher sexually services Mrs. Ayrs and also finds a copy of Ewing’s journal.
The 19th century prose and epistolary format of the first two chapters gives way to that of a cheesy thriller in “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery”. Luisa Rey is a journalist investigating claims of corruption at a nuclear power plant in California in 1975. A physicist named Rufus Sixsmith has written a report indicating that the design of the reactor is flawed and that the plant is a major meltdown waiting to happen. The plant owners have put the kibosh on the report and have a security team led by Bill Smoke that is ready and willing to deal with anyone who would dare interfere by any means necessary including murder.
“The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish” concerns the titular publisher who has a hit on his hands when the author throws a reviewer off the roof of a building for having given his book a bad review. With money rolling in, the author’s brothers threaten Cavendish unless he offers the family a larger cut of the profits. Cavendish approaches his brother for help but is instead tricked into checking himself into a nursing home.
Here the book takes a turn towards speculative fiction with "An Orison of Sonmi~451". It takes place in Korea in the not-too-distant future. Sonmi~451 is a clone who works at a fast food place called Papa Song's and gets mixed up with a group of rebels who are looking to end the slavery of clones and get rid of the totalitarian government that controls all. This story is told in the form of an interview as Sonmi~451 awaits execution. Here “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish” is the name of a movie.
"Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After" is the last tale and is not bifurcated like the others. This one takes place in the distant future and in a post-apocalyptic scenario. The story is told in a broken English dialect that takes a while to get used to. Zachry and his fellow tribespeople are eking out a rather primitive existence on Hawaii when he is chosen to host Meronym, a woman from a group of more technologically advanced people who occasionally trade with their less advanced cousins. Zachry's people view Sonmi as a deity while Meronym has a device with a holographic recording of Sonmi~451's interview.
Most of the main characters in each tale are reincarnations of each other as denoted by a comet-shaped birthmark on their backs. Mitchell doesn't do much with this conceit and I suppose it is more of a reminder of the continuity of humanity and all its foibles more than anything Zen. The theme here is that people have a large capacity to treat their fellow human being like crap – even to the point of killing them. All of the stories demonstrate the capacity for evil that groups commit upon individuals and other groups as well as individuals preying upon each other.
For example, in Ewing's story the Moriori fall victim to both the Europeans and the Maori. On an interpersonal level Ewing is victim of a long con perpetrated by one of his shipmates and almost dies as a result. The book has a fatalism to it with the inability of humanity to follow the Golden Rule being a part of our past and it survives well into the future even if most of the human race doesn't.
Ewing is the lynchpin here as his tale opens and closes the book. He survives his ordeal and resolves "I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must being somewhere." You see, helped a stowaway Moriori and was in turn helped by him in his hour of need. Altruism. Ewing also writes, "In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction...Is this doom written within our nature?"
Mitchell seems to answer in the affirmative as it is that selfishness which brings about what Zachry's people call "The Fall" or the end of civilization. Yet the author ends his book with Ewing's words of hope and determination to end slavery so perhaps Mitchell is ambivalent. And it should be noted that, while each story describes instances of people using other people as means to ends and not ends in themselves, there is also much altruism present throughout the book. We have Ewing but there are also the rebels in Sonmi~451's story who seek to end the slavery of clones and restore to them a sense of human dignity. While the owners of the nuclear power plant Luisa Rey is attempting to report on are ruthless in pursuit of profit, there are also whistleblowers as well as protesters. Despite The Fall, Mitchell puts Ewing's words of hope at the end of the book.
A second reading would no doubt reveal various motifs and references to the other stories. One that I found was in Frobisher's story where Ayrs says, "The better organized the state, the duller its humanity." This is a perfect description of the Korea of Sonmi~451 where clones do all the labor and people are expected to be good little consumers with a daily quota of money to be spent on shopping and dining out. There are surely tons more of these kinds of references.
While I enjoyed reading Cloud Atlas I still find myself befuddled about Mitchell's stylistic choices, namely, to A) write each story in a different style and B) split most of them in two. How do these elements reinforce the book's theme? Perhaps they were just done for fun which is not a problem as I rather like the style. Or maybe I just need to contemplate the book a bit more.
The film adaptation comes out next month and I am looking forward to it. It will be interesting to see how it navigates the multiple narratives. Will each one get a different style as in the book? The one thing that has me worried is that the trailer I've seen seems to emphasize the reincarnation element which is very minor here. But it's only a trailer so I'll just have to wait and see.
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