An Orison of Sonmi-451, The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish (themes)

          Now having read to page 387 (only 122 pages left!), I feel like I have a decent sense of Cloud Atlas.  While each story is distinct, there are undeniable themes that stretch across the entire novel.  So far the major ones I've noticed are slavery (occasionally with regards to race), perception of death, and corruption (especially in relation to corporations).

          David Mitchell's discussion of slavery begins with the very first chapter.  The Pacific islands Adam Ewing is staying at have a terrible history of Maori massacring and enslaving their peaceful neighbors, the Moriori.  Autua, a slave who joins Ewing on the Prophetess, is introduced to the story being whipped in punishment for his escape attempts.  In An Orison of Sonmi-451, the issue of slavery is not one race enslaving another, but one creating artificially creating another, the fabricants, and keeping them docile and ignorant of their status.  Upon her ascension, Sonmi-451 realizes that even if the word slavery is banned in Nea So Copros, fabricants are slaves, complete with collars.  In response, she wrote her "Declarations" in protest of the social structure and became a martyr.  Again in Sloosha's Crossin', a group of barbarians known as the Kona invade Zachry's homeland in an attempt to round up slaves.  Zachry and Meronym are forced to run and try to escape, unable to help the captured by themselves.  In a reversal of roles, Meronym, a Prescient from a more advanced civilization, is characterized as having darker skin.  While Meronym indicates that slavery is not limited to race, it is a persistent social system that characters are constantly struggling against.

          Across the six stories, characters perceive death in vastly different ways.  Luisa Rey does not look forward to death, yet she considers her pursuit of the truth of the danger of Swannekke worth the risk to her life.  Similarly, Sonmi-451 accepts her death sentence because her publicity caused her Declarations of freedom to become common knowledge.  They both are willing to die for a cause.  On the other hand, Zachry and Meronym decide not to sacrifice themselves.  As the only people not yet captured by the Kona, they are the only ones in a position to rescue the enslaved Valleymen.  But they are severely outnumbered, failure is guaranteed, and they chose to run for it and preserve their own lives in the hopes of helping in the future.  Cavendish, along with his friends, Ernie, Veronica, and Mr. Meeks, are also unwilling to accept death.  They launch a daring escape from Aurora House so that the can continue living life on their own terms.  As Cavendish said in conclusion, "[...] it is attitude, not years, that condemns one to the ranks of the Undead", the "Undead" being those who do not live life to the fullest and simply await death (Mitchell 387).  As important as the perception of death is the idea of what comes after it.  While Cavendish and Meronym scoff at reincarnation, Cavendish even editing it out of the Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery manuscript, other elements in Cloud Atlas clearly support it.  The comet-shaped birthmark is the first indication, but also Luisa Rey's description of the extreme déjà vu she felt reading Frobisher's letters and Zachry's following passage: "Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul"(Mitchell 308).  Over all I would say that life is important (hence Cavendish, Zachry, and Meronym's defense of it), but sometimes the sacrifice of one is necessary for the good of many, for ideals like freedom and truth (hence Luisa Rey and Sonmi-451's acceptance of death).

          Like slavery, corruption is a persistent evil encountered in the book.  From the start in the Pacific Journal, the ship's captain doesn't keep Adam Ewing's room as private as what he paid for.  Dr. Goose is potentially poisoning Ewing for money, according to Frobisher.  In Letters From Zedelghem Ayrs creates a joint piece with Frobisher but passes it of as his own.  Frobisher himself has an affair with Ayrs' wife and sells some of Zedelghem's old books to make money on the side.  As Luisa Rey puts it, "Seaboard [Corporation] would assassinate a man of Sixsmith's stature [a Nobel laureate, veteran of the Manhattan Project], just to avoid negative publicity"(Mitchell 125).  And then Seaboard Corporation goes on to put the nearby city of Buenas Yerbas at danger with their faulty reactor and try to kill Luisa Rey.  In the Ghastly Ordeal Nurse Nokes and her associates abuse there power and turn Aurora House into a prison instead of an elderly home.  Nea So Copros, the corpocracy in An Orison of Sonmi-451, is completely corrupt and creates fabricant slaves.  It even forms an artificial resistance effort because "it attracts social malcontents like Xi-Li and keeps them where Unanimity [the police force] can watch them.  Secondly, it provides Neo So Copros with the enemy required by any hierarchical state for social cohesion"(Mitchell 348).  The over-corporatization side of corruption is emphasized in the juxtaposition of Neo So Copros and the back-to-basics Colony Sonmi-451 encounters.  In Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After, the primary act of corruption is Lyons betraying his fellow Valleymen  in favor of the barbaric Kona.  The list goes on; corruption is omnipresent.  Thus characters throughout the stories must struggle against it, facing the enduring conflict of good vs. evil.

          There are a couple smaller themes, too.  While I think they deserve a mention, they have a less important role.  Women's equality, for example, plays a huge role in the Luisa Rey Mystery, but it doesn't really expand to the other five stories.  Ideas about old age and the unwanted elderly surface primarily in The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, but also in An Orison of Sonmi-451 where the old fabricants who outlived their usefulness are killed and butchered for meat and people get facescaping, an advanced form of plastic surgery, to hide their age.  Lastly, religion and faith are represented in multiple forms, from Christianity to idolism to the God-like representation of Papa Song with his Catechisms to the worship of Sonmi-451 to the use of judas as a an independent word and "augurin's" that tell the future.