Cloud Atlas: A Celebration of Storytelling

Having (initially) suffered through the indecipherable gobbledygook of Sloosha's Crossin' and having commenced on the descent of the novel's story arc, it became clearer and clearer to me that Cloud Atlas isn't so much an actual story as it is a celebration of the art of fiction writing. As the various chapters wrap themselves up, a sense of familarity starts to settle in, as if these formerly curious strangers were slowly revealing themselves to actually be old friends. Heroes arise and band together. Villains make themselves known. Nefarious plots  and hidden truths are revealed in a pattern not unlike the various books and movies we've engaged in.

To illustrate, in all the chapters, the ambiguous nature of the various characters slowly sharpen to set apart the good guys from the bad guys, often in various dramatic ways. In Sonmi 451, what was initially a conversation between an ascended fabricant and an archivist gradually turns into a battle of wits between a freedom revolutionary and an evil corporation's pawn. Sonmi becomes more flagrant in expressing her opinions and her revolutionary ideas to the archivist, rather than just telling her story. In turn, the archivist becomes more expressive himself, protesting Sonmi's heretical ideas. In the Pacific Journal, Henry Goose suddenly makes himself known as a real villain, poisoning Henry in an effort to steal his livelihood.

If I had read these stories as simply stories, then I would have been a bit disappointed. Nothing happens here that is particularly surprising. I've seen all of this before. However, one has to read Cloud Atlas as a whole. One of its major thematic points is that regardless of the circumstances of the world, whether it is ruled by corporations or annihilated in nuclear fire, and regardless of how people speak or look or think, there will always be people who are good and bad. There will always be people looking to exploit one another, people looking to simply get by, people who want to do the right thing, and numerous combinations of all of the above.

In making this point through its unique structure, Cloud Atlas also becomes a kind of love letter to storytelling. Its chapters stand wildly apart from one another in terms of setting, characters, plot, and voice. The abrupt shifts between these elements from chapter to chapter were difficult to not be annoyed by. Yet I think the reason I kept reading, and I think this is the same reason most people kept reading, was the element of storytelling that has compelled people to engage in stories since the beginning of the human race; this element of the human spirit, and the interplay and the battle between those that are good and those that are evil, and our eagerness to see which triumphs over the other. We have even made terms for these things: protagonist, antagonist, rising action, climax, falling action. The very existence of these terms revolves around the idea that stories are conflicts between something that is good and something that is evil, and these conflicts must be encased in a journey of sorts, and I think this is what Cloud Atlas is celebrating.

Mitchell's Style

David Mitchell worked incredibly hard to create a book filled with innovative literary techniques, but throughout the entire story I found myself wondering what his real intentions are. Obviously he wants to challenge the reader as he changes plots and syntax so abruptly, but is he as concerned with the actual substance of the novel as he is with creating all of his twists and connections?  Quite often during many of the stories, especially the Sonmi and Adam Ewing tales, I found myself reading without absorbing anything because I didn’t find the story to be very enticing. Now, I am not denying that I am probably just really missing the point here, but for some reason I feel something is absent from the novel.

Mitchell is extremely concerned with showing off his abilities to manipulate the plot with his changes in style, but the book would be even more enjoyable if he had fewer characters and a more developed narrative. Considering how many pages each story uses, it is pretty easy to sum up their entire tale in just a couple paragraphs. It seems to me that Mitchell is more concerned with his own mastery of each genera and language, than the actual substance of the story.

Furthermore, it took at least a few pages in each story for me to regain the ability to really understand what the characters were saying, and for an author that’s really risky. For example, Sloosha’s Crossin’ is my favorite story, but if I were reading it for leisure I would have set the book down after the 2^nd page, never to pick it up again. But, if Mitchell had cut back on some of the syntax, then his story becomes clearer, and he opens up more room to create an even more interesting storyline.

Now that Cloud Atlas is nearly 10 years old, I am curious to see how Mitchell would change the story, if at all. As the concept of having really twisty plots has popularized, I believe the book could become irrelevant because the storyline is not strong enough to hold its own against similar novels.

Who is that voice in my head?

Hearing the voice in my head change into someone totally unrecognizable is what happened to me on several occasions while reading “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell.  First and foremost, the Diary of Adam Ewing started this story off in a way which was totally unexpected and apparently set in “the spittoon of the South Pacific.”  For the entire first forty pages, I was unsure if this was the kind of story that I would enjoy because I was finding it difficult to relate to the narrator Adam because of his dialect.  Eventually I found my brain growing accustomed to the words on the page and I found my inner voice as that of Adam and I was able to wrap my brain around the story… and then it just stopped.  First it was there and the story was gone, vanishing into thin air. 

I thought my book was defective and I decided that I’d return it to the book store in a day or two and I continued on to the section about the “Letters from Zedelghem.”  It was uncanny but my brain adapted to this story more quickly and I found myself reading, sounding in my head like I were writing the letters as a spoiled, manipulative British cad.  What is interesting, now that I take the time to think about it, is that reading about Luisa Rey didn’t affect me at all.  Probably because it was written in a contemporary format of the language I understand and that my brain readily assimilates to.  It was like reading just ceased to be challenging and the words just flowed in like a typical story I’d read for entertainment.  It was something my brain could easily recognize so my thought processes relaxed. 

Then, just when I thought I was making progress, Mitchell switched gears and took me to London and dropped me into the mind of an elderly British man.  Not too difficult because the language here was also contemporary but after hearing Luisa in my head, it made my brain feel a little tired, just as though I was Timothy Cavendish taking a wearisome journey.  However, this was just a setup because Mitchell was really just warming up my inner voice up for Sonmi-451.  Reading as though I was a futuristic Korean clone was a place my brain really fought to go…at first.  Then, just like those brain teasers that spell words without vowels in order to show how the brain adapts, my brain adapted to Sonmi-451.  Then finally, Zachary arrived and it was like the stretching exercises before the actual workout worked.  For the first few pages I struggled with Zachary’s voice in my head and then he was just there as if he’d been there all along. 

The long drawn out point of all this is that I liked allowing all those characters with their different words and narratives into my brain.  I liked flexing my brain muscles to allow the characters to take root in my head and lead me down the path of their various stories.  I appreciated how Mitchell made me work for it a little, getting to know the characters via their dialect.  However, it was a clever way to get me to relate to the characters by having them all tell their stories in the first person.  I think it was this literary scheme that made the story and the characters within in it compelling.