This Time Round: David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas

Introduction Cloud Atlas is a book that involves six stories taken place in completely different time periods and involve different plots. The stories in Cloud Atlas all carry some sort of lesson for the reader to interpret throughout the book. Although the stories have different plots and seem to have no correlation, overall there is an underlying lesson when combining it all. This is up to the reader to interpret through examining the takeaways of each story. The characters throughout the stories follow certain traits and patterns that seem to be postive at first, but fall for a sinister turn as the stories progress. This analysis will only focus on a few of the stories told in Cloud Atlas that are found to be the most influencial to the

“This Time Round: David Mitchells Cloud Atlas” is an article by Heather J. Ricks that examines the Background of the office David Mitchell. The author grew up during the Cold War which had a major influence in the way the stories were written, Heather J. Rick's sees Cloud Atlas as being taken place in a post-apocalyptic setting which connects back to the author's background of living through the Cold War. Afterwards everything in Mitchell's eyes was a post-apocalyptic setting. Another article by Wendy Knepper “The Sound of Silence: Eschatology and the Limits of the World in David MItchell’s Cloud Atlas.”, examines the writers perspective while writing the stories. Essentially exploring why the author wrote things the way he did and how. Metaphors and similes play a key role in the analysis of the six stories. Paul Harris goes in depth with the literary devices used in his article “Introduction: David Mitchell in the Labrynth of Time”. Examining other stories that are similar to Cloud Atlas can help demonstrate an understanding of how the structure is setup in the book. Waldron and Samuel James do a great job of examining Cloud Atlas in a different perspective. Instead of looking from the inside readers perspective, it is analyzed through one who has read both Cloud Atlas and a similar book, House of Leaves. This new book has a very similar structure as Cloud Atlas in the

It is clear that all of the stories are taken place in completely different settings, but since they were written during the height of globalization, the author uses the readers ability to understand the different settings in order to truly understand the book. This is seen in many different books structured similarly such as House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. In Paul Harris’ article “David Mitchell in the Labyrinth of Time, he talks about a how similarly Cloud Atlas and House of Leaves are setup in the sense that they both use multiple stories as a form of a puzzle for the reader to solve. This is seen in Cloud Atlas heavily. In The first story is all about heiarchy and how it is unfair to treat people poorly even if they are below another on a ranking system. Cloud Atlas views this lesson in the form of a sailor ship run by Adam Ewing. Ewing has this persona that he believes to be perfect. He prays to god, does good deeds, and helps in any way he can. But throughout all of this, he is being hypocritical in the sense that he claims to be a religious well doer, but continues to treat everyone below him like garbage. The people under his ranking are viewed as slaves or, in some cases, useless. “The weak are meat, the strong do eat.” (Mitchell 503). This quote shows how he doesn’t care how well off a