Filth's Forgetting

Old Filth grew up under numerous unfortunate circumstances.  His father never interacted with him as a father should—in fact, they had little to no communication on the whole.  Filth was forced to live in a rather uncaring home and was subject to ridicule because of his stammer; he was called “Monkey” because of the way he talked.  At one point, he was even beaten.  When he was in his late teens, his schoolmasters accused him of being homosexual because of his brotherly bond with his good friend Pat.

Page 21 provides an insightful glimpse into Filth’s defense mechanism that has helped him put these terrible memories aside for his entire life.  Gardam writes, “Filth had always said—of his Cases—‘I am trained to forget.’ ‘Otherwise,’ he said, ‘how could I function?’  Facts, memories, the pain of life—of lives in chaos—have to be forgotten” (21).  Granted, as Gardam explains, Filth is a lawyer who has consistently used this purposeful forgetting when dealing with cases in which he sends innocent men to be executed.  The guilt would be too much for anyone to bear, and Filth—who has a very high reputation in society and cannot risk distorting his respectable image—is no exception.

However, not only does Filth’s intentional repression of memory apply to his law career, but it is a defense mechanism he employs to wash away the horrible memories from his youth as well.  Of course, anyone who has suffered under the same circumstances as Filth may do the same if he or she does not have the gumption to embrace his or her past.  As mentioned, the other element riding on Filth’s shoulders is his position in society.  People hold Filth in a very high regard.  Gardam’s novel begins by describing how others view filth, and page 17 tells of how “his eyes and mind alert, he was a delightful man.  He had always been thought so.  A man whose distinguished life had run steadily and happily” (17-18).  With such an untarnished reputation at stake, Filth would be mortified if anyone knew about his shameful past.  Thus, he attempts to bury every depressing memory from existence.

Filth and His Relationships

                Although we discussed in class how the inability for Filth to express his emotions is largely to do with the way that he was raised and his experiences with this father, I believe that it was more than just his father that affected him. Also, I think he is rather aware of his inability to connect by the end, rather than being oblivious to truly knowing himself.

            Filth is not just abandoned emotionally by his father but rather by several figures that he tries to form an emotional connection with. The Ingoldbys are a notable and impactful example. He felt close to them, almost as if they had adopted him as part of the family. However, when Pat fell ill he was shunned from their family so easily and was left questioning “have I the right to be their living Eddie” (107). Past this example, there is his aunts, who admitted that they had put their plans on hold for him, due to his father’s generosity. But, as soon as he is old enough to care for himself, they pack up, get married, and seem to be more distant to him. Later in the novel we also see the brief relationship that he has with Queen Mary, but this too seems to be inconsequential and belittled the longer he lives because no one is aware of her. Then probably one of the hardest withdraws of emotion was Betty’s affair and knowing that no matter how much he loved her she had strayed.

            Even though there are these instances where others seemed to be the one pulling back the affection from the relationship, Eddie himself refuses closeness in relationships at times. For example there is the girl in his youth that he sleeps with and leaves without a second thought. When he is with Isobel she confesses her love for him and he just continues his preoccupation with getting back simply saying “I have a bad reputation already” (252).  These examples show that even though Eddie did get emotion withdrawn from him, he can also consciously make the decision to do that to other people.

            However, all these actions seem to make sense in the end of the novel when he admits that “he has lost desire. Not sexual desire, that had been a poor part of his nature always” (257-258). He is somewhat aware that the habitual withdraw of emotion, by people he became close to in his life, is one of the factors that has caused him to lose his desire to live, but he is also aware that sexual desire is what has kept him going. In a way, being the one that withdraws the connection, in these sexual relationships, is his way to deal with the fact that others have left him. That is, it is the one that that satisfies his needs, but also makes him feel like he has some power again and thus gives him reason to continue.

The Search for Power in Cloud Atlas

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.

A common philosophical question debates the reality of free will versus destined fate, and if both can exist simultaneously. Cloud Atlas delves into this topic by presenting us with multiple stories, varying in time periods and people.  There seems an existence of two souls, two entities that keep being brought back together, in various forms, genders, and relationships. Although these souls keep resurfacing and debatably have destined, dictated lives, they also have the ability to make choices, thus exercising free will in a destined path.

            One story accounts of Timothy Cavendish; a man tricked by his brothers into checking into a nursery home.  One day while playing a card game called “Patience”, Cavendish realizes, “the outcome is decided not during the course of the play but when the cards are shuffled, before the game even begins” (368). This realization reflects the ideal that everything in the course of a life is dictated by a plan and a destiny. This idea argues everything is predetermined, and although people may feel as though they are making decisions, the outcome has already been decided.

            This ideal is explicitly opposed in the incidence of Luisa Rey and Joe Napier. Joe decides to escape after retiring from the controversy at Seaboard. Knowing that Luisa Rey is in trouble, he comes bank to help and save her from her death in the bombing of Third Bank in California. Luisa tells Joe, ‘”I feel […] that I-no, that you-broke some sort of decree back there. As if Buenas Yerbas had decided I was to die today. But here I am” (428). Here there is a suspicious notion that Luisa Rey should not (according to her fate), be alive at this point, but because Joe Napier made the decision to come back to save her, she remained alive.

 Joe Napier had had a guilty conscious leaving Luisa Rey in danger because he had known Luisa Rey’s father from earlier on in his career. They had both been cops called to duty in a shootout. Luisa Rey’s father had been running by Joe when a grenade had been thrown in Joe’s general vicinity. Joe account’s Luisa Rey’s father kicking the grenade away, saving Joe’s life, but taking his own. Towards the end of the novel, Luisa Rey and Joe Napier find themselves in the face of death when Bill Smokes finds and points his gun towards them on the Starfish. Smoke kills Joe, but before he can get to Luisa, Joe, in return, kills Smokes.

Both Luisa Rey's father’s and Joe Napier’s act changed the fate of people in the novel.  Luisa Rey’s affecting Napier’s fate, while Napier affecting Luisa Rey’s. This goes to show that although there may be a destiny, that isn’t to say it cannot be changed.

Cavendish believed that the game had been determined when the cards had been shuffled, before the game had even begun. But this isn’t to say you have no say in the way you play your cards. This novel argues that both free will and predetermined destiny can coexist and regularly effect and regulate each other.

Evolution of Words

During “An Orison of Sonmi-451”, Mitchell introduces us to a futuristic, corporate, fast-paced culture and language that at first seems unfamiliar, but as the chapter progresses it becomes increasingly apparent many of the nuances are not so different from today.  Sonmi-451 works at a popular fast food chain, Papa Song’s, and there are multiple references to how Sonmi “saw Papa Song’s golden arches recede into a hundred other corp logos” (201).  During the orison, she talks about purebloods wearing “Nikes” and “Rolexes” that are just what they seem: shoes and watches.  When she watches The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, the reader gains some insight of one of the words evolution in the past; “Disneys were called ‘movies’ in those days” (233).

In Sonmi’s Korea, this evolved language and culture is the norm to fabricants and purebloods alike, but there are still people, like Sonmi, who see that the control business has over language is more serious than simply changing names of words; “Corporacy is built on slavery, whether or not the word is sanctioned” (189).  An interesting note is that the word slavery itself is banned, which suggests that attempting to ignore or eradicate an idea or action can start at the most base level: not being allowed to talk about it. Sonmi is clearly one of the few who has both experienced this enslavement to Corporacy and learned enough through her studies to identify it, both through her experiences and the usage of language.

While the evolution of language is natural and expected, Mitchell seems to predict the language of the future will become bogged down by consumerism and materialism, just as many accuse popular culture of being affected by today.  The glimpse into Sonmi-451’s world suggests that humans will sacrifice the individuality of language, and consequently the individuality of each person, for the flashiness and ease of consumer culture and allow it to permeate our means of communication.   

Language in Cloud Atlas

While reading Cloud Atlas, I have consistently been struck by the ways in which language grows and changes throughout the novel. While this is a small detail to the book as a whole, I find it interesting that in order to represent the changing times, Mitchell puts a great deal of thought and effort into changing the ways that characters speak, and the meaning of words which are said. When the book opens, the reader finds a representation of the 1800’s through literature. Usage of words, the way that sentences are cobbled together, are both familiar, yet foreign. “Our noble Cpt. Molyneux today graced the Musket to haggle over the price of five barrels of salt-horse with my landlord” (17). While this sentence is understandable, it is still markedly different from how one would be expected to write, or talk today.                                              

In the next section, in Belgium of 1931, words and phrases become much more familiar, making the story easy to follow, and changing the overall flow. The tone is more familiar, as Frobisher writes to Sixsmith through a series of letters. This too creates a different atmosphere. Still, the sentences are generally short, often times leaving incomplete sentences: “Cause for minor celebration” (65), or “Said I was flattered, but protested that I couldn’t possibly accept a garment of such sentimental value” (67). These sentences seem to speed the story along because of their often “missing” pieces.

As the story progresses, language does as well. The stories of Luisa Rey and Timothy Cavendish are told in language which is most familiar to that of the present day. Words are all relatively normal and relatable, though there are some phrases which are used to relate to character profession and behavior in order to give them more life. It isn’t until the reader reaches the final two sections, on Sonmi-451 and Zachry, that language begins to change again.

In some ways, the language of these two sections might be considered to have degraded over time. In “The Orison of Sonmi-451,” words such as disney and nikon have come to take on a larger meaning, movie and picture. They are no longer the specific words they once were. As society has changed and technology has advanced so far, it is an interesting juxtaposition to see language seem to disintegrate. Still this happens with slang fairly frequently in our own, every day.

Finally, Zachry has the most markedly different language. Society seems to have fallen into chaos, and even language itself seems to have fallen with it. The “g” in words ending in “ing” have been dropped completely. While the sentences and phrases are understandable, they are very far from what one would consider normal. This difference can be seen in the first sentences of his section: “Old Georgie’s path an’ mine crossed more times’n I’m comfy mem’ryin’” (239).

I find all of these differences interesting because they are not only helping to define the world the characters live in, but they can be seen even in the world today. In my free time, I even found an article talking about the possible realism behind the change in language within this book, which only furthered my interest in the author’s intent. It is impressive alone to write a novel, but I think it’s something else to work so intently with language, as Mitchell has within Cloud Atlas.

Article: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/49505623/ns/technology_and_science-science/#.VP7-Ivx4pTY

Commentary similar article (original article unavailable): http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/14dq6v/the_depiction_of_future_english_in_cloud_atlas/

The Importance of Asking Questions

Throughout Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell, the reader is exposed to various societies, each with their own set of standards. On several occasions in the novel, the characters are led to believe that life is the way it is, it has always been this way, and that it is unlikely for life to ever change significantly. However, not all of the characters buy into this ideal. For example, after being introduced to certain people, Sonmi-451 of the “An Orison of Sonmi-451” story begins to realize how incorrect she is about her views on society, because she starts asking questions most other people are too afraid to ask. Mitchell uses Sonmi-451’s revelations to demonstrate how dangerous and inadequate it is to live under the assumption that all there is to life is the way one sees it.

For Sonmi-451, her discovery about the undisclosed truth about her society comes when she leaves the job she was created for and is exposed to life beyond Papa Song’s, the restaurant where she was employed. However, Sonmi-451 did not even have to step out of the restaurant to become curious. At first, Sonmi-451 becomes heavily influenced by a different fabricant, Yoona-939, who starts asking questions about life beyond the service industry. Yoona-939’s curiosity leads to an attempt to escape, which then inevitably leads to her death (195). Because of everything she is already exposed to, courtesy of Yoona-939, and because she starts asking too many questions of her own, Sonmi-451 is sent away. Her breakthrough comes when she returns to Papa Song’s after being gone for some time. She realizes that fabricants, like her, are basically mindless creatures, used to please and feed the purebloods. Sonmi-451 goes on to tell her traveling companion Hae-Joo, “We are just slaves here for twelve years” (231). The reader does not become aware of how accurate this statement is until much later in the novel, when Sonmi-451 is exposed to what Xultation, or fabricant retirement, is truly like. Instead of serving as a reward for more than a decade of employment, at Xultation, fabricants are killed, torn apart, and then their pieces are repurposed (342-3). The worst part is up until the very last moment before death, the fabricants are extremely happy because they are led to believe that they are finally being recognized for their years of service. By incorporating these two scenes in a futuristic story within the novel, Mitchell is sending out a warning to his readers. He wants his audience to realize how important it is to continuously question society, regardless of the consequences. Even if there are no answers at first, Mitchell wants the questions to keep being asked until answers exist. If not, society is at a greater risk for the mistreatment of its people.