Cloud Atlas

“Now I protested with the utmost vigor, the Indian had received holy sacrament.”

To Ewing, Autua’s life has value because Autua is Christian. He can’t be killed by Molyneux because he has received the holy sacrament that signifies his acceptance of the Christian God. To the other men, however, Autua’s religion is irrelevant. They see only the color of his skin, so they assign little value to his life. Ewing isn’t as reductionist in terms of race as his fellow passengers, though he still values Christian lives over non-Christian lives.

“Old, blind, and sick as Ayrs is, he could hold his own in a college debating society, though I notice he rarely proposes alternatives for the systems he ridicules.”

Ayrs has many critiques of the current establishment but lacks the imagination to propose any solution. His worldview is little more than a cynical mirror, sneering at everything while being too afraid to put forth anything new. Like Ayrs’s music, his ideological leanings have become restricted and staid. He has nothing original to offer other than criticism, just as he steals Frobisher’s music while simultaneously criticizing it.

“How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings.”

Frobisher’s denouncement of Ayrs illustrates his grasp of his place in the universe but also his own subtle arrogance. He criticizes Ayrs’s inflated sense of self-importance but places his profession inside a canon of human art that traces back thousands of years. Frobisher is part of this eternal recurrence, continuing a vein of human creativity that has been reincarnated over many generations. He may not be hankering after immortality but—through his creative processes—is inserting himself into the canon of artistic creation, which will outlive him far into the future. He shares this with Ayrs, even if he doesn’t admit it.

“I’ve been married to science all my life.”

When Sixsmith is trapped in the elevator with Luisa, she makes an allusion to his romantic life. Sixsmith changes the subject quickly, not revealing his sexuality to her. Later, she learns about his close sexual relationship with Frobisher through the letters he leaves behind. His hesitancy to share such an intimate part of his life reveals the subjugation still directed toward gay people in the 1970s. Although nearly half a century has passed since Frobisher’s letters were sent, Sixsmith still doesn’t openly discuss his sexuality and cloaks himself in his work rather than reveal his true self to the world.

“A recent attempt to erase ‘Dr Sixsmith’ from the name-plate ended in messy failure.”

Seaboard has arranged to kill Sixsmith to cover up the flaw in the nuclear plant. Although Sixsmith will die, the echoes of his memory linger on. Just as his name can’t be scratched off his office door, his actions and his influences can’t be erased from the world. Sixsmith didn’t have children, but he has a legacy that he has passed on to Luisa. Just as Frobisher influenced Sixsmith, Sixsmith influences Luisa, creating an unbroken chain across decades and generations.

“Sixsmith knows them by heart, but their texture, rustle and his friend’s faded handwriting calm his nerves.”

Sixsmith has committed the content of Frobisher’s letters to memory—but the physical reality of the letters is just as important to Sixsmith. The letters provide him with a direct connection to the man he loved, a tactile link that nothing else can replicate. Many of the characters in Cloud Atlas are searching for meaning and connection in a chaotic world. To Sixsmith, Frobisher’s letters provide a physical reminder of a connection that has long been severed.

“You’ll notice, I’m always attacked in threes.”

Despite his sardonic tone, Cavendish hints at one of the characteristics he shares with the other protagonists. Like them, he searches for patterns to add meaning to his existence. Because of his personality, he abhors sincerity, but his joke about being attacked “in threes” demonstrates that he’s evidently cataloging and reviewing the events in his life to derive meaning from their similarities. Like Frobisher composing an elaborate arrangement or Luisa uncovering a conspiracy, Cavendish is searching for patterns to explain the chaos of his life.

“Despondency makes one hanker after lives one never had.”

Feeling anxious and alone, Cavendish seeks solace in Luisa’s story. In a structural sense, the characters’ emotional plights connect them. He takes comfort in escaping into her story, not realizing that he and Luisa are connected across time and space by more than just their birthmarks. Cavendish and Luisa are evocative echoes across time, feeling their unity at moments of emotional intensity. Despondency connects Cavendish to the life he never knew he had.

“There are no slaves in Neo So Corpo! The very word is abolished!”

The Archivist fiercely defends the status quo, insisting that slavery can’t exist in his society because the government has banned the word. Despite this ban, Sonmi considers fabricants very much enslaved. In Cloud Atlas, slavery and the restriction of freedom are tools of oppressors and antagonists across centuries. Even when these restrictions are named differently, they still exist. The Archivist sees no difference between abolishing slavery and merely banning a word.

“Then, as now, dystopia was a function of poverty, not state policy.”

Sonmi draws parallels between Timothy Cavendish’s 20th-century existence and her own society, pointing out how poverty creates dystopias in both. Inequality in society is a constant, a perpetual status quo to be challenged. Cavendish challenges authority in his small way; Sonmi challenges authority on a much grander scale. In both instances, they take on a dystopic institution (a nursing home and a corporatized ruling government) to secure their liberty. The worlds may not look alike, but inequality and restrictions on liberty exist in both.

“But for Valleyman savage gods weren’t worth knowin’, nay, only Sonmi was real.”

To Zachry and the Valleymen, Sonmi is a goddess. Zachry compares her to the “savage” gods of rival people and elevates her over all others, praising her peaceful message. This view of Sonmi contrasts with her portrayal as a dangerous rebel in a dystopian society. In her own lifetime, Sonmi fought for the right to even be considered human, let alone a god. This contrast demonstrates that the idea of “real” is fluid; to Sonmi and Zachry, reality is a malleable, changeable idea based only on the narrator or protagonist’s perception.

“Meronym said Old Georgie weren’t real for her, nay, but he could still be real for me.”

Zachry’s relationship with Meronym has changed to the point that he’s willing to quote her as an authority figure. Earlier in the chapter, Zachry’s references to Meronym’s comments were scathing and sarcastic. If she’d referenced anything as abstract as the subjective nature of belief earlier, he would have mocked her. As they climb the sacred mountain together, however, he’s willing to engage with her ideas, even if he doesn’t quite understand them. Zachry’s change in tone reflects his changing relationship with Meronym.

“I might observe that you have embraced Nea So Copros propaganda wholeheartedly, Archivist.”

When accused of spouting anti-government propaganda, Sonmi challenges the Archivist by suggesting that propaganda functions in both directions. Truth is a relative position, meaning that propaganda affects both characters equally. Neither is innocent, and reality is sculpted from a subjective position. Sonmi’s chapters portray a two-way interrogation in which, unlike in other protagonists’ chapters, there are essentially two narrators. This dialogue creates two subjective, competing realities, each with its own propaganda.

“One so shallow he didn’t even know it.”

To the Archivist’s surprise, Sonmi considers the murder of a replicant an actual murder. Her jab at Seer Kwon is, by extension, an indictment of the Archivist. Since the Archivist is surprised by her position, Sonmi’s accusation of shallowness extends to the Archivist. Both Seer Kwon and the Archivist are shallow enough to see the fabricants as inhuman, even as they talk to Sonmi. They’re so ingrained in the anti-fabricant status quo that they can’t imagine a different world.

“Oh, the horror, the horror.”

Throughout his narration, Cavendish peppers his prose with many literary references. He’s insecure about the lack of respect he receives as a publisher and editor, so he strives to prove himself to other intellectuals by referencing other works. Here, he references Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, in which an English colonial military figure named Kurtz disappears into the Congolese jungle. Kurtz’s final words are those Cavendish uses: “the horror, the horror” (371). Cavendish is comparing his own experiences in a retirement home to Kurtz’s witnessing and participating in the brutality of colonialism. In Heart of Darkness, Kurtz is the antagonist, but Cavendish nevertheless likens himself to the monstrous figure. Cavendish is keen to demonstrate a knowledge of literature, but his references are often shallow and imply an unintended purpose.

“I fished the tooth out to keep as proof because otherwise no one will ever believe me.”

Cloud Atlas is filled with repetitions. The opening chapter begins with Ewing finding Goose on a beach, searching for human teeth as part of an elaborate scheme. In the back half of the novel, Cavendish collects a human tooth as proof of the end of his own elaborate escape scheme. The events, images, situations, and ideas echo across time yet reveal different angles and perspectives.

“The doll of ‘now’ likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.”

In his scattered thoughts moments before his death, Sachs wrestles with a philosophic conundrum that also describes the novel’s structure. Like the nested dolls of his imagination, the narratives of Cloud Atlas contain one another. Unpacking them provides a means of traveling back and forth through time. A “nest of presents yet to be” (409), their existence receives additional meaning by their proximity to other presents and their relationships to other futures.

“You’re damn right it doesn’t, but it’s still true.”

Napier explains to Javi that the truth doesn’t always make sense. In the world of Cloud Atlas, truth functions as an assembly of intersecting and often competing narratives rather than an objective universal constant. The truth is what people perceive it to be, free from constraints such as morality or sense. Napier’s cynical attitude gives shape to this idea, which is evident throughout the novel.

“Beyond Roeselare, the land grows crater-scarred, criss-crossed with collapsing trenches and pocked with burnt patches where not even weeds take root.”

Frobisher journeys through a Belgian countryside that is still scarred by the horrors of World War I. The physical environment reflects Frobisher’s own trauma. His brother died during the war, and the loss had a big impact on his family relationships. Now adrift in Belgian, Frobisher is, like the landscape, scarred but trying to heal.

“Eternal Recurrence’ll die with him.”

Frobisher has listened to Ayrs’s Nietzsche-inspired composition but he hasn’t yet internalized the ideas. According to Nietzsche’s theory, ideas and patterns recur eternally across time. Even if the composition isn’t finished, the idea continues, and Frobisher will be trapped in between servitude and freedom from Ayrs for eternity. The composition can’t die, just as the novel itself is evidence for the ideas contained within it.

“Time cannot permeate this sabbatical. We do not stay dead long.”

In the final lines of his final letter to Sixsmith, Frobisher approaches something resembling a religious revelation. While he may not believe in Christianity or God, he talks vaguely about reincarnation with revived interest. Frobisher’s life has been tragic, and he seeks to end it, yet he wouldn’t be averse to repeating it all over again. His work has given him the confidence that he can transcend time and place, eternally recurring just as Ayrs’s composition suggested.

“We give him an incentive to earn money, so he can buy his baccy.”

In the colonial outpost, the Indigenous people’s contented way of life is an offense to the capitalistic white colonialists. On arrival, they discover that the local people don’t need anything, so they can’t be compelled to work. The colonialists thus impose tobacco addiction on every Indigenous person on the island, creating an artificial economy based on an invented need so that they can exploit Indigenous people’s labor for profit. Despite their insistence that they’re at the top of “Civilization’s Ladder,” the colonialists are unable to recognize happiness when it involves rejecting greed.

“The weak are meat the strong do eat.”

Goose’s mantra is a self-justifying catechism that foreshadows much suffering in other chapters. From Cavendish’s fleeing violent threats, to Sonmi’s seeing fabricants turned into food by the powerful, dystopian government, the strong prey on the weak. This dynamic permeates human history across every society. Ewing, like many other protagonists, demonstrates that this doesn’t need to be true. Ewing survives, and others triumph, while Goose’s mantra is proved predictable but unnecessary.