Each unique story in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas offers a perspective on society. The reader may have a hard time understanding
the novel if he or she tries to understand how the six different stories are
all connected. Certainly the protagonist
does not play the exact same role in the different stories in the novel,
despite a number of distinct characteristics some of them share. Dismissing the complexity of the intertwining
stories, a main theme that Mitchell presents throughout the novel is the natural
hierarchy of society. He uses the
various characters, settings, and time periods to convey the effects this
hierarchy has on people.
Throughout the novel, Mitchell presents the craving for
power as a driving force behind the motives of most people. Some people are willing to do anything to
move up in society, or to stay at the top.
Perhaps that is the reason behind a lot of the corruption that goes on
in the world. Deception is a trick used
by a lot of the characters to gain or maintain their power. In Half Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery,
characters like Alberto Grimaldi, Fay Li, and Bill Smoke are behind a scheme to
gain money and fame through the deception of others. Rufus Sixsmith is the only scientist to
disapprove of the company’s new billion-dollar invention, and he knows their
intentions to eliminate him and his scientific proof of their flaws. In the opening of the story he ponders
suicide and adds, “Besides, a quiet accident is precisely what Grimaldi,
Napier, and those sharp-suited hoodlums are praying for,” (Mitchell 89). Eventually, Bill Smoke murders Sixsmith to
prevent him from releasing his information to the public, and runs Luisa’s car
off of a bridge (141). The higher-ups of
the company go to lengths to conceal this secret in return for, as Isaach Sachs
puts it, “Money, power, usual suspects” (132).
Grimaldi himself ponders his strong desire for power and money,
thinking, “how is it some men attain mastery over others while the vast majority
live and die as minions, as livestock?...the will to power” (129). Through this story Mitchell wants to convey
the natural desire that people have to attain power, and the nasty and
deceitful things people will to do attain it.
Mitchell also attempts to show how slavery is a result of
such hunger for power in a society. The
Orison of Sonmi, Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy
Cavendish, and Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’Ev’rythin’ After all contain elements of
slavery or confinement. The “xecs” in
the Orison of Sonmi deceive an entire race of fabricants into slavery. The society doesn’t even have a word for
slavery, but Sonmi still tells Archivist “Corpocracy is built on slavery,
whether or not the word is sanctioned” (Mitchell). Throughout the novel the theme of slavery is
repeated, and Mitchell attempts to show the different ways that slavery happens
in society. It mainly all leads back to
power, and the desire to be on the top of the hierarchy. At the end of the day, humans will do almost
anything to get there, including kill, deceive, and enslave entire races of
people.
At the end, after a long enough period of time, there is
always a revolution that changes a society.
It just depends on how long it takes for people to see past the
deception, the slavery, and the hunger for power. Revolution happens when enough people have a
will for it. In the final portion of
Adam Ewing’s journal, Ewing and Mitchell come to a conclusion on how this
happens. Ewing states that “no state of
tyranny rains forever” (Mitchell 500) and pledges to join the Abolitionist
cause because every ocean is just a “multitude of drops” (509). In other words, Mitchell is suggesting that
it is human nature to eventually rebel against wrong. And, people should not overlook or
underestimate the influence they have on change.
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