Reincarnation in Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas investigates reincarnation through six individual narratives woven together to create one large story. Each narrative has its own characters, settings, and plot that could easily stand alone as separate short stories, yet they display common themes, such as the ever present tension and struggle between the privileged characters and the repressed lower classes that link them to one another and make them inseparable. Together the individual narratives create a picture of a world where the wrongs committed in a past life can be redeemed in the next. In each story, one character has the indicative birthmark shaped like a comet, signifying that this is the same soul reincarnated in another time. Throughout my reading I found myself tracking the characters with the birthmark and paying attention to their development over time. It’s an interesting theory in itself, the reincarnation of a soul meant to learn new lessons over and over in each new life, but to see it played out with such a striking symbol as a birthmark to tie seemingly unrelated characters together is brilliant.
The stories themselves are written like a matryoshka doll (a Russian nesting doll) breaking apart in the middle to reveal a hidden story within. Only the sixth story is told in its entirety before we are given the second half of the fifth story and so on. While reading I was often frustrated with this experimental form of a story within a story, within a story, but if one is able to get through the frustration of being cut off and transported to a new story literally in the middle of a sentence (I’m not kidding, it was infuriating) the format gives back to the grand meaning of the novel. Each story dies before its time as a new story is introduced, and is later reincarnated to supply the reader with the conclusion they were originally denied. The form reflects the cyclical nature of reincarnation that is so important to the novel as well, as the idea of eternal recurrence that is revealed as a sub-theme through closer examination. I was struck with the repetitive yet exciting style of the book and the idea introduced that history, or even all of time itself, repeats endlessly and that we only have to look closely to see it.
The repetitive nature of the novel is seen most readily in the events featured in each shorter narrative. Every individual story features the birthmarked character trying to break free of an oppressive force; whether that be a poisoner masquerading as a doctor, a corporation willing to kill to protect its secrets, or (my personal favorite) the “Nurse Ratchet” like employees of a nursing home. This repetitive struggle against subjugation creates a backdrop against which the main theme of reincarnation can play out without explicit explanation. This cycle of common themes created an overwhelming feeling of deja-vu that underscored the point of the novel that everything that can happen has before and will again.