Cloud Atlas

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2004

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapter 8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 8 Summary: “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish”

Timothy Cavendish is recovering from his stroke. As he gradually regains his mental faculties, he remembers that he’s “imprisoned” in Aurora House. To take his mind off the problem, he begins to edit. He works on The First Luisa Rey Mystery, but the story ends just as Luisa’s car is knocked off a bridge. He explores the retirement facility and, in the boiler room, meets Veronica Costello and Ernie Blacksmith. They’re discussing how Johns, the son of Mrs. Hotchkiss, always leaves his keys in the ignition of his “Jupiter-red Range Rover” (375) when he comes to visit his mother. Cavendish hatches his own “escape plan.” He sneaks into Noakes’s office and makes a phone call. When he can’t reach his publishing company, he calls his brother. He reaches his sister-in-law, only to learn that Denholme died in a mysterious accident. The call is cut short by Withers.

The next day, Noakes calls a meeting of the community and encourages the other residents to publicly “shame” Cavendish. He desperately tries to explain that his brother is dead, but they ignore him. The staff places Cavendish on probation. Because of his phone call, the other residents are forbidden from using the phone. This angers Ernie, who hints that Cavendish’s stroke may have resulted from poison that Noakes put in his food. They bicker, temporarily halting their clandestine meetings in the boiler room. Cavendish eventually apologizes to Ernie “like a repentant puppy” (389) and they hatch another escape plan.

They tell Mrs. Hotchkiss’s son Johns that his mother is dying. In a rush to get ahold of his mother’s jewels, Johns drives hurriedly to Aurora House. Meanwhile, Ernie tells Noakes that Cavendish is dead. When she goes to inspect, Cavendish traps her inside his room and nails the door shut. After Mrs. Hotchkiss’s son arrives, Cavendish jumps in his car with Ernie and Veronica. Since the keys are always in the ignition, they reason, they’ll be able to escape. However, Mrs. Hotchkiss’s son didn’t drive the car; his wife was driving, and she has the keys. Veronica quickly finds a spare set, allowing the escape to resume. They “ram the gates” (396) of Aurora House. They soon stop at a country pub. Inside, a crowd of Scottish soccer fans is watching a match against their hated rivals, England. The escapees use money from the car to buy themselves drinks, discovering that the silent Mr. Meeks has also stowed away inside the car. While sipping their drinks, they plan their next step. When he goes to consult his map, however, Cavendish realizes that he left it in the room he trapped Noakes.

Withers appears in the pub with Johns and an unnamed man. When they try to grab the four escapees, however, the silent Meeks stands up and—in a thick Scottish accent—accuses the English assailants of taking away his God-given rights. The Scottish soccer fans leap to the defense of their (apparent) fellow Scottish people, thrashing the assailants and allowing the four escapees to get away. Cavendish goes his separate way, allowing the others to travel south while he stays in the north. Calling his business partner, he learns that Duster’s brothers are now in prison too—and that he stands to make money from the film adaptation of Duster’s book. Adding to Cavendish’s luck, the person who wrote Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery sends him the ending of the novel.

Chapter 8 Analysis

The split between Cavendish’s chapters comes at one of the most consequential moments of his life. At the end of the previous chapter, he has a stroke. At the beginning of his second chapter, he gradually realizes who he is, where he is, and what has happened to him. In a sense, Cavendish is reassembling his entire identity after coming close to death. The experience doesn’t change Cavendish much but does harden his resolve. His more flippant manner gives way to a fundamental desire to escape the retirement home. Perceiving it as a threat to his mortality, Cavendish rebuilds his identity around the notion of escape. In this moment, he falls in line with the other protagonists. While still a self-interested, arrogant man, he imbues himself with a higher purpose, challenging the authority of the status quo, represented by the retirement home staff. Just as Sonmi sought liberty from a dystopian government, he seeks liberty from a retirement home, reiterating the theme of Eternal Recurrence. Sonmi becomes the figurehead of a revolution and, as Cavendish regains his understanding of himself, he’s instilled with a similar fervor for liberty. The stroke almost kills him but instead reincarnates him as a more fitting and ideologically suitable protagonist for Cloud Atlas.

In addition, this chapter emphasizes the theme of Authority and Greed. The route to liberty is through the greed of others. In Cloud Atlas, greed and the malicious authority it can breed is the inevitable downfall of humankind. Humans lust after material wealth for personal benefit, instituting slavery or butchering clones in their greed. Like everything in Cavendish’s chapters, the greed portrayed is smaller in scale but nevertheless a pertinent motivation. Johns and his Range Rover are summoned to the retirement home because the disinterested son is desperate to get his hands on his mother’s jewelry. The prospect of losing out on these jewels means more to Johns than his dying mother, so he speeds to the retirement home for one last chance to learn their location. His greed is dependable and exploitable. A key part of the plan is the theft of his Range Rover, allowing the escapees to knock down the gate because they were assured that the son would rush to his mother’s bedside, not out of love but out of greed. Once understood, greed can be manipulated. Cavendish is somewhat greedy himself, but he learns to recognize greed in others and to see how it can be exploited.

Of all the characters in Cloud Atlas, Cavendish may receive the biggest rewards. Ewing survives with a renewed intellectual vigor; Frobisher kills himself after crafting his only masterpiece; Luisa publishes her story in a newspaper, only to have the novel about her life written by someone else; Sonmi is executed after spreading her message; and Zachry loses his community and his family, even if he does escape from the Kona. Cavendish, however, becomes rich. He achieves the publishing success that he sought for his entire life, not just through other people’s stories but through his own. His book is the chapter itself, which is then optioned for a film that survives far into the future—a film that Sonmi watches in a nearly unrecognizable world. Cavendish not only succeeds financially but forms a legacy that outlives him by centuries. Despite his relative lack of morality, Cavendish receives rewards beyond his wildest dreams, suggesting that in the universal machinations of Cloud Atlas, fate is far removed from morality.