Morals in Cloud Atlas

Something we talked a lot about in class discussion about David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" was the concept of cruelty and selfishness found in each of the stories. Not only do these concepts come up a lot in the novel, but society today definitely exhibits these concepts often. It is more than likely that this is what David Mitchell wants the reader to see, that each of the stories in Cloud Atlas exhibit our own human history, present, and future of cruelty and selfishness. Perhaps a never-ending chain that is found in human history.

The first story in the "cloud" of stories in "Cloud Atlas" is that of Adam Ewing. Cruelty here is found in the treatment of the Moriori people by the Maori. The Moriori people are enslaved and treated as animals because they are "savages". However, there is light in the situation found in Ewing's treatment of the Moriori slave Autua. Ewing shows compassion and helps Autua out of slavery.

The second story, Letters from Zedelghem, most of the characters are cruel and selfish and feed off of each other for power. The main character, Frobisher, uses the old composer, Vyvan for power and money. Vyvan uses Frobisher for power and fame as well. Vyvan's wife uses Frobisher, and he uses her. None of these characters have outstanding moral values behind their decisions.

The third story involves murder mystery and nuclear negligence. Unfortunately, in today's society, and in the past, there have been incidents just like this.

Sonmi-451 emulates what are society is on the verge of becoming. Middle and lower class citizens will become the slaves of consumerist society and companies. Such as McDonalds in the novel. This seems to be a representation of the cruelty and selfishness found in consumer society itself.

Our Search for Knowledge

Within the story Cloud Atlas you learn about the story of Sonmi-451. I found this story to be the most interesting out of all of the stories to read. You learn of a society that depends on the servitude of clones. The clones that are named “fabricants” have no rights other than serving the rest of society. They are reduced to being in a pattern of going about their everyday chores and not questioning their purpose in life. Then you learn about Sonmi-451 who wants to learn what else life has to give her. She pushes the boundaries of society and wants to extend her knowledge.

In Sonmi-451’s push for knowledge she escapes from the McDonalds that was her “prison”. She gets exposed to the outside world which she tells the archivist that she had never known that there was such thing as green plants. She also was curious about the insects that were everywhere. Her search for knowledge extended past just the outside world. Soon you learn about her obsession with her Sony. She had a deep thirst for knowledge and this led her to connect with people that would give her access to such. She was given the ability to start attending classes at the university which was unheard of before and there was a shock to society that a fabricant could challenge the boundaries. She started to have the ability to learn about the beauty in the world.

As Sonmi-451 quenched her thirst for knowledge she was wrapped into many different situations that led to her destruction in the end. She immersed herself into the conspiracy theories of Hae-Joo and his people. In learning from him she learned of what really happened to her people. She discovered how each of the old fabricants were demolished as soon as they could not benefit from society. The purebloods feed the fabricants to each other to keep their society running without considering the rights of the servants. When she learned this she finally discovered how messed up the system was and that there was so much that could be done to improve the lives of her people.

What we learn from Sonmi-451 is that in our search for knowledge you can learn things that you never thought were imaginable. You can discover the beauty of the world and increase your appreciation for life and the way the world works. Then you can also be exposed to things that totally tear apart everything you thought about society and make you question whether or not there is hope for your own people.

Cloud Atlas

The way Cloud Atlas was written really intrigued me. The way each story was interupted by a new story kept me interested in wanting to find out more. I thought it was really cool how the story started in the 19th century and peeked in a post apocalyptic future, and then the story seemed to rewind to conclude the remaining stories. I related this part of the book to In the Night Garden and how the stories kept changing. Like I said before I seem to get a new motivation to read when a new story starts. Each of these stories can stand alone as its own, but when all of them are read they reveal the full story put together.

The moral of the stories are somewhat hidden. Mitchell "clouds" his points in a fog of ambiguity. This is why the story was confusing to me. Not because I didn't get the action in the story, but I didn't understand the deeper meaning behind each one. One of these meanings was the theory of recreation. Mitchell proposes that the universe doesn't advance but merely repeats itself.

In class we discussed the topic of reincarnation. This kind of makes me feel that people might not value their life as much if they believe that they can start over. In the novel the characters who were a part of Mitchell's theory of reincarnation they had the same inner beleifs and passions. Although they were different in certain ways they still carried the same beliefs that they had in the group. This brings up the discussion of Karma and what we do in our lives can change our "life after life."

What other morals/theories did you come across that some people might not have noticed.?

Meanwhile

I thought Meanwhile was an interesting book in the way that it lets you choose your own path through the book. The path I chose first was  the vanilla ice cream path, which shortly ended by the boy going home to his dad. So I gave the book another try and chose the  chocolate path which I ended up getting lost at after three pages. I must have gotten the colors mixed up. After I got lost I completely gave up on the book because I got frustrated. I never knew I could get stumped by a picture book is probably the main reason whyI stopped reading. Overall I liked the idea of the book but I did not enjoy it because of the complexity of the lines and where they go to next. Do you just follow them? or do you flip the page and go from there? Those where two main questions that I was asking as I was trying to follow the book. I later found out how to read the book when we went over it in class.

I Think the moral of the book Meanwhile is that you choose your own path in life (like the lines in the book) and you face, deal with, and overcome adversity. In class we argued that about how people were born into less fortunate families and how that made life nearly impossible to succeed in because of where they started. We also said the more fortunate people who are born into wealthy families where money is not an issue have a life on a platter so to speak and do not need to work as hard as the less fortunate.  I strongly disagree, my out look on life and success is: success is  loving what you do and being happy and thankful for everything you have, every single day no matter how much money you make. Success is your personal enjoyment of life and everyone who is involved, like family and friends. Just because you were not born into a more fortunate family does not mean you cant be successful in life. And to say that the people who were born in less fortunate families with not a lot of money are content with a low income job because they believe that they only have that job because of there families wealth during their upbringing? That is completely false. Every single person has the chance in some way or another to prosper in life, the only hard part about this is having the heart, motivation and the "never give up" attitude to find how to too. "there are no secrets to success. it is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure." Colin L Powell            

Reincarnation

Reincarnation is a concept that is present in many of the world's cultures. Perhaps most notably, reincarnation is traditionally accepted in Indian culture and in the religious communities that have their origins in India such as Hinduism. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell uses this concept to weave together the many internal stories.

The first protagonist presented is David Ewing, who has a distinctive birthmark. All the protagonists in the following stories have this same birthmark, except for Sloosha's Crossin in which Meronym, not Zachry the protagonist has the birthmark.

This is the main clue that these people are really the reincarnation of the same soul. But an interesting point is that though they have the same soul, they have very differing personalities and characters. But, a recurring theme is that they fight against oppression and evil in some way. This implies that one's personality is temporary and fleeting, but it's core goodness is inherent despite its physical manifestation.

This goodness may be little and insignificant in its time, but it adds up through the accumulation of lifetimes. This is what is addressed in the last line of the book; "only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!' Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?" What this line essentially gets at is that each life may be fleeting, but collectively throughout time these short lives can truly be of great consequence.

Meanwhile

When reading Meanwhile you get the opportunity to choose your own path. There are many difficult decisions throughout the story. I got stuck in the time travel circle for a long time before I found the right path. Other than the confusing parts of the story, I thought Meanwhile was a good and interesting read.

In class we discussed equal opportunity. It is obvious that some people are given more opportunities to succeed in life. This makes it easier for these people to make more money but that doesn't nessecarily mean that they don't need to work as hard. No one is going to be able to step in and run a business without the knowledge needed to help the company succeed. You can argue that they are millions of other people qualified for the job, but who would be a better canidate than the ceo's son/daughter? They lived their whole life watching and learning how their parent ran the company. People have talents that are unique to them so naturally there can't be equal opportunity. Someone who is seven feet tall is going to have a better chance of being a professional basketball player than someone who is five feet tall.

We also discussed the past and future in class. This reminded me of the movie Butterfly Effect. In this movie he traveled back in time and changed one small part of his life. From doing this his whole entire future was changed. This relates to meanwhile and the discussion we had about free will.

Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas is definitely a book that either you love or you hate. There is really no in between with this novel. It’s a sort of acquired taste. In my own personal opinion I didn’t like the book. Don’t get me wrong I am in no way saying that the book was horribly written. Even though I didn’t like the book I can appreciate how well it was written. I liked and didn’t like the way it was written.

The plot line and the way there are multiple stories that span almost half a century is sort of a deal breaker for me. It reminded me a lot of In the Night Garden and how there were different stories. It was hard for me to keep track of the different stories and try to figure out ways that each story was connected to another. The same way I didn’t like In the Night Garden for the multiple stories I didn’t like Cloud Atlas for the same reason. As much as I didn’t like the book I can’t say that it was a bad book it just wasn’t my cup of tea in a sense.

Before the in class discussion it was hard for me to see the connections between the different stories but after hearing people's examples it makes a little bit more sense to me. For example the idea of raising and falling throughout the story never really stuck out to me until someone mentioned it during a discussion.

What do you think the purpose of the different stories was?