Colonialism, Dominance and Slavery in the Novel "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell

Table of Contents

Introduction

I. Experiences of the Narrators

II. The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing

III. An Orison of Sonmi~

Conclusion/Summary

Bibliography

Introduction

In Cloud Atlas David Mitchell addresses a number of different themes. For example, he deals with the concept of reincarnation and the idea of an afterlife. Another theme that is taken up in the novel is the idea of dominance. This dominance is expressed in many different forms and ways. As seen in the title this topic will be addressed in this term paper in further detail. First of all I want to introduce you into my work. Therefore I will briefly explain what I am going to talk about and why I will do so. In the next step the target of this examination of the theme will be determined. Furthermore the introduction tells you more about what you can expect to hear in the single chapters.

In this term paper I want to show the relevance of the above-mentioned topic in the novel. The work serves to decide whether the various forms of dominance do really play an important role in Mitchell´s book or if they are just minor aspects. To do so this paper investigates the different characters and their identities. Do they all suffer from a kind of oppression and what else do they have in common concerning the question of dominance of stronger people towards weaker? These questions will be answered in the first chapter of the main body. Here the reader has to expect an overview of the different actions of the narrators rather than a general study of their characters. At that the several forms of oppression and the dangers the main characters had, have or will have to fear will be outlined. Furthermore some other aspects and terms will be mentioned and explained there in general, especially the concept of temporality and its meaning inside the novel. After giving you this sort of review I will concentrate on two main protagonists, Adam Ewing and Sonmi~451. Here again, but in a lot more detail, I will highlight the relevance of colonialism, dominance and slavery in the cases of these two characters. Questions that guide these chapters are the following: What have the narrators done or what have they not done to escape from their fate and what is the solution of their problems? In addition to the previous issues and goals I strive to achieve I want to complete this term paper with a conclusion. This conclusion first of all contains a summary of the general aspects dealt with in the main body. Moreover a thesis will be established that might be controversial and proper to be discussed in subsequent contentions with the same or similar topics and will of course have reference to the overall topic Colonialism, Dominance and Slavery in David Mitchell´s Cloud Atlas.

Apart from the novel itself which is of course one of the main sources for the following analyses and interpretations, there is a number of highly recommendable secondary literature that is very useful for the topic. At this point one has to mention Patrick O´ Donnell´s A Temporary Future: The Fiction of David Mitchell, which was first published in 2015 and contains latest information about the fiction of Mitchell and is including an extra chapter about the matter of time and identity in Cloud Atlas. Aesthetics and Ethics in Twenty-First Century British Novels, which was published in 2013 by Peter Childs and James Green deals with the works of four British authors including David Mitchell and moreover his novel Cloud Atlas. Here the novel is analysed under aspects of humanity, superiority and inferiority. Nearly the same aspects are taken up in Hywel Dix´s Postmodern Fiction and the Break -Up of Britain, which is also used for the examinations.

At the beginning of my introduction I have mentioned that it will also contain some words concerning my personal motivation and why I have just chosen that very topic . The subject dominance and oppression with all its secondary aspects is relevant to every situation and time. It is not just a phenomenon of a particular time or place in human history. Exactly the opposite it appeared in every period and it always will appear in future societies. Even if the forms have changed and they might change once again in an unknown future, the fact that the subject is always relevant cannot be doubted. Just in turbulent times like today, it is worth investigating how the topic is handled in such a novel like Cloud Atlas.

I. Experiences of the Narrators

In general Cloud Atlas provides six narratives who are arranged chronologically. It starts with the diary of Adam Ewing, an American notary who is on a journey on the South Sea and learns about the history of the suppressed Moriori and ends with the second part of the same story that has been interrupted meanwhile. In between, the novel moves across different zones of time and space from the mid-nineteenth century to a post-apocalyptic future where the end of human being on earth is lying ahead. At the first look the relations between the six characters do not become clear. But after reading the novel and reconsidering all its chapters, the coherences figure out and the so-called cycle of the book closes. All the narrative voices have their own style and vocabulary that is adjusted to the time and space each lives in. Not just in terms of language and style or how we as the reader can better understand the relations in the novel, we see how important the role of time is, especially when we talk about the various forms of exploitation the characters do experience. This chapter serves as an overview of the six narrators. It summarizes their experiences in the novel under the aspect mentioned in the title. Apart from the different times and places there is one thing all the narrators in Cloud Atlas have in common and that is their experience of exploitation and oppression. No matter if it is of colonial, political or economic kind.¹

The first chapter deals with the diaries of Adam Ewing, who witnesses more than ones the abuse of power during his journey around the Pacific. In ´Letters from Zedelghem´ the story of the young and very much talented musician Robert Frobisher is told. The chapter represents an interesting relationship between Frobisher and the elderly composer Vyvyan Ayrs. Ayrs needs Frobisher´s help to complete his works and Frobisher starts composing his own music. It is hard to realize who imposes upon whom and for what goals. In the third part of the novel Luisa Rey is introduced. The reporter is to reveal the lacks and dangers of the so-called ´Hydra-Reactor´, that is going to be built on Swanneke Island. With reference to the topic, “Half-Lives – The First Luisa Rey Mystery” is a stunning example for corruption as, on the one hand, it is about a concern that is concealing facts in order to enforce its own commercial targets in an industrialised and capitalised society. This chapter is followed by ´The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish´, a story about a publisher who is on the run across England after having published a successful book and ends up in a nursing home and tries to escape from it together with his fellows. Except from questions like whom you can trust and whom not, the Cavendish story is least affected by the subject of exploitation and oppression. The next narrator who enters the stage is Sonmi~451. Sonmi is a robot created by the government and resembling a human being in dystopian future in Korea. The clone works as a waitress until it is released by some scientists. While gaining human knowledge she is almost caught by the police. During her flight Sonmi has to realise that her suspected friend Hae-Jo Im is an agent, who works for the government and finally has to face her fate. The novel´s climax forms “Sloosha´s Crossin´ an´ Ev´rythin´ After”. The story is set in an post-apocalyptic future that is far distant from the 21st century. We get to know Zachry who is a member of one out of two remaining tribes on earth living on the isle of Hawaii. They are visited by the “Prescients”, the other extant folk that owns technological knowledge in a world that further reminds us of the Stone Age. Both folks are at the risk of extinction. In general Sloosha´s Crossin´ is concerned with the question of what colonialism, dominance and slavery can lead to.²

As it was said before, all the stories take place in different locations and times. Nevertheless the characters are all connected with each other. Each story leads to the others and in the end the alleged singularity of the narrators becomes an enclosed system. Anyway, analysing Cloud Atlas cannot be done without investigating the role of temporality. Therefore the relation between the past and the future in the entire novel needs to be discussed. The protagonists themselves switch between their own pasts and futures and so the characters they proceed and follow do. This is why the narratives themselves have to be investigated with a look at the historical circumstances of the time they live in. The sequences of the novel reach from the colonialism of ´The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing´ to the globalized corporatism of ´The Orison of Sonmi~451´ and in between we experience features just like the Cold War technocracy of “Half-Lives”. Reading the novel you could imagine that Mitchell depicts advances in civilization if you, for example, compare the history of Western Imperialism in the mid-nineteenth century in Ewing´s diaries with a more civilized society in Frobisher´s story. Finally, this idea turns out to be a fallacy. What we can witness in the end is a return to a distant past in Sloosha´s Crossin´ where moments of civilization´s advance return.³

In the next two chapters two episodes that have been explained briefly before will be explicitly discussed. At first I will talk about Adam Ewing and the journey he made. Afterwards the story of Sonmi~451 will be analysed. Main focus is on their experiences that have to do with the overall topic and there are a lot of these in those two appropriate episodes.

II. The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing

The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing is the first episode in Cloud Atlas. Ewing´s journal takes place around the year 1850. A fact that is not mentioned in the text by itself, but the Californian Gold Rush, which happened to that time. The story offers lots of examples of exploitation and oppression that will be analysed in the following sections.

The notary Adam Ewing is on his way from New South Wales in Australia back home to San Francisco. He travels on a small ship that is named the Prophetess and whose crew consists of mainly well-situated Western people, who want to benefit from the Gold Rush. After the vessel and its crew have stranded on the Chatham Islands, the notary begins to explore this peace of earth. Here he is informed about the history of the indigenous Moriori and their fate. The Moriori people have lived on isolation for hundreds of years. The only thing they had to cope with was the nature. Firstly, members of the tribe died as foreign settlers arrived and brought diseases the locals were not able to heal. Afterwards the invasion of Maori tribes decided their fortunes. The Maori were armed with weapons and gained support from the British. The peaceable Moriori who were alien to the concept of war have been massacred and enslaved by the “new” ones, who claimed the land for their own.⁴ The indigenous people are described as friendly and tolerant people in the novel. They believed that the colonists had no bad intentions and would leave the Chatham Islands in peace. But their generosity should not have been paid back. “On Waitangi Beach fifty Moriori beheaded, filleted, wrapped in flax-leaves, then baked in a giant earth oven with yams & sweet-potatoes.” (Mitchell, p. 15).

This selected anecdote reflects the fate that had befallen the Moriori and also mirrors the cruelty of the Maori.

Mitchell skillfully involves the role of the British Empire in this genocide of a whole tribe. Not just that the Maori are supported by the Empire with weapons, they also feel British in a way. “The Maori proved themselves apt pupils of the English in “the dark arts of colonization”.” (Mitchell, p. 14). This part of Ewing´s journal shows us that Western territorialism had the power to change the rhythm of nature and a whole system. The Maori and their colonization of a land and also its people and with that the exported British will to power in a part of the world they never had the right to possess are the first stunning examples for oppression, in this case examples for colonialism, in the “Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing”.⁵ There are a number of scientific studies, like Robert Young´s discourse on race theory and colonialism in Colonial Desire, that state that there had been a discussion that came up about the act of generating a fixed British identity and there is no doubt that this progress was a reaction to the new circumstances in colonial societies. The very first of these discussions took place in Britain in the nineteenth century at the climax of colonialism. David Mitchell reflects that process in his novel portraying the Britishness abroad from the European continent with all its features, is it the advanced European with more technical knowledge than indigenous tribes or the cruel mass murderer.⁶

This is by far not the only example for exploitation in Ewing´s story. There are many other things that happen on the Chatham Islands and on board of the Prophetess Ewing becomes a witness to. During the journey he is disturbed about the events that happen on deck of the vessel. He is shocked by the story of a helpless and vulnerable young sailor. The boy, not belonging to another human race in the eyes of the crew, is verbally, physically and sexually abused by the rest of the crew. After weeks of suffering such a treatment he eventually takes his own life.⁷ Happenings like this are simply explained by the doctor Henry Goose. Goose, the embodiment of exploitation and oppression in the whole story, illustrates such occurrences like the suicide of the poor young sailor. The doctor compares civilization with a food chain.

“Maoris prey on Moriori, Whites prey on darker-hued cousins, fleas prey on mice, cats prey on rats, Christians on infidels, first mates on cabin-boys, Death on the Living.” (Mitchell, pp. 523-4).

With that comparison Goose reduces human life to the very lowest level. Furthermore he creates an artificial hierarchy that is not based on any scientific studies.⁸

But Ewing does not only have to worry about fortunes of other people, because the notary himself becomes a victim of his fellow passenger. Goose diagnoses the symptoms of a rare parasitic worm that destroys the brain of its host and administers Ewing a medicine which does not heal the patient, but is killing him slowly. Ewing does not know that the educated and reliable seeming white man only claims to be a doctor and trusts him blind. It does not come to his mind that there could be something wrong with the medicine even after weeks of suffering from the disease until it is almost to late. Ewing at some point can be described as naïve, because after their conversations about cultural and technological achievements and humanist ideals, what he sees in Goose is the embodiment of Western culture and civilization.⁹ To mention it once again and with reference to the leading question where exploitation is represented in the novel, Dr. Henry Goose typifies exactly that. It is not just his behaviour and his actions on the Prophetess and the Chatham Islands. Furthermore it is his whole aura and especially his utterances when he converses with Ewing. One thing that turns out is that Goose, like all other members of the crew, are confident of the superiority of the white European. In addition to this all the disgraceful actions that happen during the journey are simply explained by the “Christian Mission” that will bring enlightenment and achievement to the underdeveloped parts of the world. His assertions strongly remember me of the statements of social Darwinism, a theory that came up at the very same time the Ewing story takes place. A circumstance that certainly did not happen by chance. The above-cited utterance where Goose compares civilization with a food chain can be taken as an example for that.

[...]

¹ Peter Childs, James Green. Aesthetics and Ethics in Twenty-First Century British Novels. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. 155.

² David Mitchell. Cloud Atlas. London: Sceptre, 2004.

³ Sarah Dillon. David Mitchell: critical essays. Canterbury: Gylphi Limited, 2011. 15-23.

⁴ Childs, Green 154.

⁵ Fiona McCulloch. Cosmopolitanism in Contemporary British Fiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 143.

⁶ Robert J. Young. Colonial Desire. Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London: Routledge, 1995. 3.

⁷ Childs and Green 155.

⁸ McCulloch 144-145.

⁹ Patrick O´Donnell. A temporary future: the fiction of David Mitchell. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015. 90-91.