Reversing the Clock in Cloud Atlas: How Cyclical Notion of Time May Resolve the Apocalyptic Tendency
David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas consists of six interconnected novellas with six different protagonists set in different time periods and locations. Each novella leaks into the next through connections like birthmarks and documentations such as letters and manuscripts. With these connections and what is hinted in the fifth novella An Orison of Sonmi~451, “[t]ime is what stops history happening at once; time is the speed at which the past disappears” (Mitchell 244), the novel experiments with space and time by pushing their boundaries to see what they are capable of. This essay will argue that Cloud Atlas, a postmodern metafiction experimenting with space, and both linear and cyclical notions of temporality, arrives at the conclusion that a cyclical understanding of time may be the remedy for the apocalyptic tendency of humanity. The essay will begin by analysing how the novel qualifies as a postmodernist metafiction. Next it will explore how the novel experiments with space and time. It will then discuss patterns, purpose, and outcomes of this literary experiment.
As a postmodern novel with stories within the story about various reincarnations of the same soul, there are genre mashups in Cloud Atlas, with the fourth novella as a black comedy drama, the fifth novella s a dystopian science fiction, and the sixth and final novella as a post-apocalyptic fantasy. With the change in the narrative voices, genre mashups in the novel contributes to give shape to Mitchell’s critique of history. Take the transitions from the second novella with Robert Frobisher as the protagonist to the third one with Luisa Rey and then the fourth one with Timothy Cavendish as an example. The form of the narrative changes from an epistolary novella to an action-packed spy novella which is then sent to Cavendish the editor to consider publishing. Not exactly a renowned editor, Cavendish overwrites much of the prose in the Luisa Rey narrative. This places Mitchell in the third person omniscient position of the implied author and indeed allows him to be advisory and even didactic as he interprets history.
Regarding metafictionality, Berry writes that “[m]etafiction’s defining characteristic [is] its attention to its own constructedness […] and its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality” (Berry 129). There are indeed multiple examples from the novel that demonstrate how Cloud Atlas qualifies as a postmodern metafiction. As I discuss some examples below, I will also demonstrate how, similar to genre mashups, metafictionality also gives shape to Mitchell’s critique of history with the example from the second novella Letters from Zedelghem. In the second novella, the protagonist Robert Frobisher reads Adam Ewing’s journal, which we read in the first novella, and thinks that there is “[s]omething shifty about the journal’s authenticity–seems too structured for a genuine diary, and its language doesn’t ring quite true–but who would bother forging such a journal, and why?” (Mitchell 64) The diary seems too well constructed to be a real diary and the novel as a metafiction consciously draws attention to this. By commenting on Adam Ewing’s journal, Robert Frobisher changes his interpretation of Adam Ewing’s narrative voice and hence readers’ awareness of that of Mitchell’s too, although his narrative voice remains consistent. In other words, Mitchell uses Frobisher to throw a metafictional perspective on his narrative, alerting readers to the fictionality of his novel. This example of metafictionality also gives shape to Mitchell’s critique of history by Robert Frobisher’s contextualizing the journal within history for the readers. Robert Frobisher clarifies the time period of Adam Ewing’s journal before interpreting his character and narrative. This contextualization provides a strong basis for Mitchell’s critique of history in this example.
Berry also writes that during their reading experience, readers regularly encounter “descriptions of the work as though from a position above, beyond, or outside it[, which] take the form of comments on the text we hold in our hands” (Berry 131-132). Similar to Frobisher’s comment on Adam Ewing’s journal, Timothy Cavendish the protagonist in the fourth novella, also makes a comment on the previous novella, a text that both he and we as readers hold in our hands. He thinks that “[Half-Lives–The First Luisa Rey Mystery] would be a better book if [the author] Hilary V. Hush weren’t so artsily-fartsily Clever” (Mitchell 164). This comment of his is an example of self-reflexivity in the novel. As for self-criticism, once again similar to Frobisher’s comment, the Archivist, who interviews Sonmi~451 the protagonist in the fifth novella, delivers a line “Fantasy. Lunacy” (342). This is the Archivist saying that he doesn’t understand how Sonmi~451 did not recognize the Union’s plan to overthrow a state with a standing army of two million by engineering the ascension of six million fabricants as sheer fantasy and lunacy. The Archivist himself as a character in the novella questions the very plot of the novella itself as the plot is unrealistic and illogical. This example, along with Frobisher’s comment, are similar in the way that they both question the text as truth or fiction and prompt readers to reflect on how one distinguishes between “fiction and reality”.
Other than genre mashups and metafictionality, there are also other postmodern features, with which Cloud Atlas also experiments, observed in the novel. The novel experiments with space by the process of world-building. According to McHale, heterotopia is constructed in the novel as fragments of worlds are arranged vertically by nesting secondary “micro-worlds” within the primary narrative world by introducing stories within stories (McHale 147). The six novellas construct six secondary “micro-worlds” within the novel and can in a way be standalone stories that can be read on their own, but together they form the primary story of the same soul. Mitchell’s experimentation with the category of “world”, as McHale describes it, can be understood as fragments of world in the form of different incarnations of the same soul. This contributes to give shape to his critique of history regarding different aspects such as cannibalism and the ruling system, and I will discuss this with the examples of Adam Ewing and Sonmi~451. In the beginning of the first novella, Adam Ewing meets Dr. Henry Goose, who collects human molars at a location that used to be “a cannibals’ banqueting hall [and] where the strong engorged themselves on the weak” to sell the teeth to “[a]n artisan of Piccadilly who fashions denture-sets for the nobility” (Mitchell 3). This scene demonstrates the act of cannibalism and that the rich frequently consume the poor including even molars to readers. The fragment of worlds in the form of protagonists’ witnessing the act of cannibalism links the micro-world in the first novella and that in the fifth novella together, as “[w]hat matters in this global act of cultural and actual cannibalism is the kind of spin given to it in the domain of public discourse” (Bayer 352). In the fifth novella, Sonmi~451 witnesses an act of cannibalism as “low-class workers are literally fed into the system of global corporatism” (Bayer 352). Having depicted a dystopic micro-world in which the act of cannibalism still exists after all this time, Mitchell concludes the fifth narrative by having Sonmi~451 tell the Archivist that her whole life was merely created to “manufacture consent” and “discredit Abolitionism” (Mitchell 364). Through Sonmi~451’s narrative voice, Mitchell criticizes the ruling system in which the governments appease the public through the passing of restrictive legislation. As Bayer puts it, “[t]he cannibal teeth turned dentures […] serve as a cross-historical reminder that humanity has suffered from its own greed, especially so when higher motives are being evoked” (Bayer 352). After proposing the idea of micro-worlds, McHale then suggests that such vertical proliferation “creates opportunities for a variety of paradoxes that further foreground the category of world” and the paradoxes in Cloud Atlas are “strange loops, when an inset world turns out to be continuous with the primary world that frames it” (McHale 147). As readers first begin to read the novel, they will not possibly realise that the world depicted in the first novella is merely the very first world to be followed by other inset worlds in the novel. These inset worlds follow one another in chronological order, making them continuous with the primary world that frames it as the primary story of the novel is essentially one about the same soul.
However, during the process of world-building in Cloud Atlas with the construction of heterotopia, the narrative is constantly interrupted in the middle and at first there are seemingly abrupt transitions from one novella to the next. But, as readers continue reading they find traces of connection jumping between these micro-worlds, in both explicit and implicit forms. As for explicit connections between micro-worlds, examples include Rufus Sixsmith, the recipient of Frobisher’s letter in the second novella, meeting Luisa Rey, who is the protagonist of the third novella and later reads Frobisher’s letters. Another explicit connection is that Luisa Rey’s story which is the third novella is sent to Cavendish the editor and the protagonist of the fourth novella as a manuscript. The comet-shaped birthmark as an explicit connection linking all the micro-worlds in Cloud Atlas is also found in all protagonists, except in the sixth novella, in which the protagonist’s wife possesses this birthmark. In the third novella, Luisa discovers that she shares the same comet-shaped birthmark with Robert Frobisher, as he mentions having one between his shoulder blade and collarbone in letters, and Luisa expresses her doubt towards this by saying “I just don’t believe in this crap. I just don’t believe it. I don’t.” (Mitchell 122) This birthmark therefore also serves as a metafictional part again questioning the plot itself as the idea that somehow all the characters are reincarnations of earlier characters seems dubious. In addition, although the novellas are set in different time periods and locations, as mentioned earlier, the location of the Pacific Islands is indeed the same for the first and the final novellas, which, in the case of Cloud Atlas, are where history begins and ends. Mitchell’s choice of setting both novellas in the same location is no coincidence, since the Pacific Islands “as the beginning and end-point of history indicates that the behavior of mankind does not change across time” (Ng 116). Both novellas depict the destructions of the Moriori and the Valleysmen by tribes, the Maori in the first novella, and the Kona in the sixth novella and the worlds in both novellas are essentially the same, as there is a pressure to dominate and oppress others, which leads to the following point regarding implicit connections. Implicit connections linking micro-worlds in the novel include common themes, namely capitalism and slavery, as in the story of Autua the Moriori slave in the first novella and that of Sonmi~451 the fabricant in the fifth novella. Characters are connected across time and space by stories of power and exploitation of the weak by the strong. History repeats itself with the recurrence of these events across time and space. Another implicit connection is a parallel between the second and the fourth novellas. Frobisher in the second novella cannot get a hold of the second half of Adam Ewing’s journal at first, and Cavendish in the fourth novella starts editing Luisa’s story, only to find out that the manuscript runs out of pages right after Luisa is run off a bridge.
Cloud Atlas insistently emphasizes these connections, especially the comet-shaped birthmark which appears throughout the novel. Although these connections do not seem to affect the protagonists’ lives much, they execute the significance of this literary experiment by Mitchell which is demonstrating the apocalyptic nature of humanity and proposing a plausible solution. With the ending of the sixth novella, Cloud Atlas shows us that nothing progresses through time, and that humanity will eventually lead itself to its own annihilation because of its own advanced knowledge as time proceeds. The comet-shaped birthmark in fact carries a symbolism rather than being just a random shape, as it can be linked to omens and apocalypse, like a comet hitting earth in ancient times, wiping out the dinosaurs species. The image of the comet-shaped birthmark is Mitchell’s attempt to evoke what is unpresentable metaphorically or figuratively, which is what McHale sees as a defining feature of postmodern experimentation. The gradual emergence of an underlying cyclicality is figuratively represented in the form of the image of the comet-shaped birthmark in the novel. Now, each of the protagonists in the novel is born with a mark symbolising an apocalypse on them, and this is Mitchell suggesting that “the kind of apocalypse traditionally envisioned as an event to be encountered in the future is already taking place” (Bayer 345), as the novel discusses various issues that can possibly lead to the destruction of humanity such as environmentalism and technological disasters.
Cloud Atlas as a postmodernist metafiction also foregrounds the category of the world by “deconstructing [narrative worlds] right before our eyes” (McHale 147). As the first half of the novel proceeds, readers can see that the novellas proceed along a timeline as they are told chronologically, although the first five novellas are interrupted in the middle. However, after wrapping up the sixth novella, the novel deconstructs this carefully built timeline by arranging the novellas in a reverse order. The novel deconstructs the timeline and bends it into the shape of circle as it ends at its very beginning. This demonstrates the circular notion of time and leads to the following point about how Cloud Atlas experiments with time.
Cloud Atlas experiments with time through the process of narrative-breaking. The novel begins with the chronologically earliest story and then moves forward from there, interrupting each novella in the first half of the novel at cliffhangers and such linear narrative structure remains until the sixth and the final story, Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After, which proceeds from the beginning to the end without interruption. The second half of the novel then goes chronologically backwards and concludes the first five novellas in reverse order until it finally ends with the protagonist in the first story again. The six novellas as a whole story are a continuing history across time, and the novel’s disruption of conventional narrative experiments with both linear and cyclical notions of time. As “[p]ost-apocalyptic narratives implicitly assume a linear progression for the development of mankind” (Ng 118), Mitchell proposes to tackle the apocalyptic tendency of humanity by adopting the circular notion of temporality instead of the linear understanding of time that we are used to. As what Reynolds writes,
“[l]inear time cultures believe they manage and control time; in cyclical time cultures, however, time manages life, and humans must adjust to time. In these cultures, time is neither viewed as linear nor as event/person related, but as cyclical, circular, repetitive. The human being does not control time; the cycle of life controls people and they must live in harmony with nature and subscribe to the cyclical patterns of life.” (Reynolds)
The “cyclical patterns of life” in Cloud Atlas include cyclical patterns of violence and predation throughout the novel. The aforementioned twin destructions of the Moriori and the Valleysmen by tribes, namely the Maori in the first novella and the Kona in the sixth novella demonstrate the cycle of life in terms of violence. Regarding predation as a cyclical pattern of life, it is demonstrated as corporal techniques of punishment and control under capitalism visited upon Timothy Cavendish in the fourth novella and Sonmi~451 in the fifth novella. The cyclicality, or repetition, that we can observe throughout the novel, seems to happen or be at work unconsciously, as it were, undermining the protagonists’ or characters’ pursuits and desires to achieve certain objectives, just as the interruption of each novella in the middle undercuts the readers' desire and pursuit of closure and narrative gratification.
To conclude, as just discussed above, one can observe cyclical patterns of violence and predation throughout the novel. These patterns indicate the recurrence of events and how history keeps repeating itself throughout the timeframe set in the novel. By depicting these patterns, Cloud Atlas as a literary experiment serves as Mitchell’s attempt to suggest or even issue a warning to us that we are already facing the danger of apocalypse of which we may not be aware. In addition, Mitchell, with Cloud Atlas as a literary experiment with both linear and cyclical notion of time, suggests that the recurrence of events possibly leading to annihilation of humanity can hopefully be resolved with this cyclical notion of temporality. This approach of apocalyptic writing of his prompts readers to reflect on plausible solutions for the apocalyptic tendency of humanity to facilitate the construction of a sustainable world for a better future.
Works Cited
Bayer, Gerd. “Perpetual Apocalypses: David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and the Absence of Time.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 56.4 (2015): 345-354. Taylor & Francis. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.
Berry, Ralph M. “Metafiction”. The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature. Bray, Joe, Alison Gibbons, and Brian McHale. London: Routledge, 2012. Print.
McHale, Brian. “Postmodernism and Experiment”. The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature. Bray, Joe, Alison Gibbons, and Brian McHale. London: Routledge, 2012. Print.
Mitchell, David. Cloud Atlas. London: Sceptre, 2004. Print.
Ng, Lynda. "Cannibalism, Colonialism and Apocalypse in Mitchell's Global Future." SubStance 44.1 (2015): 107-122. Highwire Press Journals. Web. 29. Apr. 2016.
Reynolds, Sana. “Linear, Flexible, and Cyclical Time: Analyzing Time in Cross-Cultural Communication.” Interpersonal Relations. Association of Professional Communication Consultants, n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
