Cloud Atlas by
David Mitchell
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
Spoilers Ahead!
Cloud Atlas is a book that is both pressing and engaging at the same time. What I mean to say is that while there are times that the book becomes hard to read and you feel like you're forcing yourself through every sentence, there is an underlying current which draws you in demanding your attention and holding it in such a way that you cannot even consider looking away.
The book is built around six central characters whose lives are intertwined not in their presents but rather through the marks that they leave in time. Each story draws on some part of the past working it's way from the farthest point back with Adam Ewing to the farthest future of Zachry and finally back to Adam Ewing again. The book can seem daunting and heavy at times with themes of past and future and how we shape the world with our beliefs and prejudices, but, at the same time, it has these stunning lines that make it almost impossible to to ignore no matter your beliefs.
By far, the hardest part for me to read was the sixth narrative and farthest point back in history:
Sloosha's Crossin' An' Ev'rythin' After. It wasn't terribly written. It wasn't even boring. Actually it was very interesting. The story builds up a post-apocalyptic world. One which we have created for ourselves in our drive for power and progress. And it all culminates, at least for me, in a line that Zachry hears from a corpse as he finds himself being driven mad while a personification of the devil that they call Old Georgie tries to convince him to kill his companion, a woman named Meronym. "
List'n to me, Valleysman, the soosided priest-king spoke,
yay, list'n. We Old Uns was sick with Smart an' the Fall was our cure." (pg 279)
Despite the difficulty of the language for that entire difficult passage, that line engaged me. It's insinuations and even its ring of truth. It doesn't even matter to me that it is a figment of Zachry's imagination. Just because that is the case, does not make it any less true. And it makes you wonder if perhaps we should take a step back and wonder where all of our progress is taking us and if it is really worth it in the end.
But, I suppose that is why we also have the view point of Sonmi-451, a fabricant who is manipulated just to make a great show in a world ruled like a business. At the end of her testimonial which she gives before she is to be executed, she points out that she realized she was to die. She knew she was being manipulated. "
But if you about this...conspiracy," the archivist asks, "
why did you cooperate with it? Why did you allow Hae-Joo Im to get so close to you? Why does any martyr cooperate with judases?
Tell me. We see a game beyond the endgame. I refer to my
Declarations, Archivist.[...]
But to what end? Some...future revolution? It can never succeed. As Seneca warned Nero No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor." (pg 349)
And in that moment, we see that just because you have to die to get your message across doesn't mean it will be ignored. In fact, it makes it more likely that you will be heard and that people will remember.
Of course there is much more to the story than even this point. Throughout every narrative we find prejudices. Most are racial, blacks against whites. Fabricants against pureborns. Barbarians against the civilized. Old against the young. Rich against poor. During part of
Half-Lives: The first Luisa Rey Mystery, there is a scene where Luisa attends a party held by her mother for what could only be called the upper crust of society. The conversation devolves into a demand for a virtual overthrow of government to be replaced by corporations. "'A meritocracy of acumen. A culture that is not ashamed to acknowled that wealth attracts powers...' '...and that the wealth
makers-us-are rewarded. When a man aspires to power. I ask one simple question: "Does he think like a businessman?"'" (pg 403).
Ironically that is exactly what happens by the time of
An Orison of Sonmi-451. But all of these are beliefs. Ones that change over time as is said in
The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing. He quotes a man he had once known and was visiting again by the name of Wagstaff who says "It's all rats' nests & rubble now. That's what all beliefs turn to one day. Rats' nests & rubble." (pg 486)
In a story that is both intricate and fascinating, Mitchell builds world upon world and twines them together intricately in a way that they cannot truly be taken apart and yet each stands on its own as a testament to a life lived those lives both happy and tragic. But of all the things in the story, I think that my favorite moment, my favorite part, my favorite
line is the very ending as Ewing makes a conscious decision to change his life and the world that he is going to leave for his young son. "'He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life announced to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!' Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?" (pg 508-9).
Would it be nice to be able to live that? To be the drop that helps to turn the tide? And wouldn't it be even more wonderful, to be the one to inspire the other drops and watch as the ocean turns, ripples, and shapes the world around it? I'd like to think so.
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