Cloud Atlas

A character whose story is set in the 19th century, before the US abolished slavery, Adam Ewing is a white man whose diaries are the first and last chapters in Cloud Atlas. His diaries record his adventures across the Pacific Ocean as he travels back to his native America. Ewing’s experiences in the unfamiliar part of the world expose him to radical ideas that threaten his understanding of the status quo. The humanity of the non-white people he meets strikes him, while the white people he believes to be his friends or equals prove themselves monsters in various ways. Thus, Ewing emerges with a new perspective. He resolves to become an abolitionist, realizing that the conceptions of race that seemed like such certainties in his life are created by white people to justify their pillaging and plunder of other lands and peoples. Ewing’s journey leads him toward a new and uncomfortable truth, in which his existence and knowledge have furthered the suffering of others and he permitted this to happen. He realizes that in the times when he didn’t speak out, when dinner conversation exposed the importance of “Civilization’s Ladder” or when he stood and watched white people whip non-white enslaved people, he failed in his duty to humanity.

Mirroring Ewing’s ideological awakening are his experiences with Henry Goose. At first, Ewing is relieved to have Goose aboard the ship. He praises Goose’s skills as a doctor and takes pleasure in their budding friendship. When he falls ill, he’s grateful that Goose is there to treat him. Gradually, Ewing’s illness worsens. As he sinks deeper into a fever, Goose increases the dosage needed to get rid of the parasite that’s supposedly killing Ewing. Only at the novel’s end does Goose reveal his true intentions and his true self. He’s not Ewing’s friend. Rather, he has been poisoning Ewing with the aim of stealing everything from inside his trunk. Their entire friendship is a scam, and the man Ewing believed was his friend is a villainous murderer. This dynamic reflects Ewing’s evolving understanding about slavery. He took comfort in the morals and etiquette of his social class; just as he welcomed Goose’s familiar company, he accepted slavery as just another part of the status quo. Over the course of the voyage, however, Ewing’s experiences with Autua and other non-white people—and with white people—teach him that slavery and associated racist views are poisoning society. Like Goose, people who defend slavery are self-interested villains whose beliefs poison the world.

In the end, Ewing resolves to bring about change in the world. He wants to abolish slavery, but his first thought is of the confrontation that he’ll inevitably have with his father-in-law, whom he imagines criticizing him for trying to take action against something that he’ll never be able to change. To his father-in-law, slavery is too ingrained in society to ever be abolished. Ewing, however, believes that even the tiniest action can help enact great change in society. He’s proved correct. Not only is slavery abolished within decades of the time that his diary was written, but his diary has an impact long after his death. In successive stories, the diary becomes the sextet, which becomes Half-Lives, which becomes The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, and so on. Ewing’s efforts and his beliefs do have an impact, demonstrating that his father-in-law’s convictions were wrong. Ewing might not have expected that his work would echo across centuries, but Cloud Atlas explores how these tiny drops make up an ocean.

A young composer, Robert Frobisher is the author of letters to Rufus Sixsmith that make up two chapters. His letters from Zedelghem describe his journey to Belgium—where his brother died in World War I—to pursue his artistic ambitions while also escaping from his estranged family. Frobisher is a bisexual man and isn’t afraid to talk about his sexual escapades with his apparent former lover, Sixsmith. The tender connection between the two men seems to rise above mere sex. While Frobisher has sex with many people, Sixsmith is one of the few toward whom he shows genuine affection. He continues to write, up until the moment of his death by suicide, allowing Sixsmith to function as the documentarian and the arbitrator of his memory. As further evidence of the intimate nature of their relationship, Sixsmith holds on to the letters for many years. On the night of his death, he rereads the timeworn letters, which eventually fall into the possession of Luisa Rey. These letters are a capsule of Frobisher’s lost love, an embodiment of the only intimate relationship he ever treasured. The strength of his feeling for Sixsmith adds extra weight and importance to the letters.

Frobisher is an ambitious young man. He feels as though he’s capable of becoming a great composer, so he seeks out Vyvyan Ayrs to act as his employer and mentor. Ayrs quickly exploits Frobisher: He sends his wife, Jocasta, to seduce the young man while stealing Frobisher’s work and passing it off as his own. During this time, Frobisher is allowed to believe that he’s in control of the situation. He’s mistaken. The novel’s structure divides Frobisher’s story into two parts. In the first, he believes that he’s in total control of his fate—that he seduced Ayrs’s wife and that Ayrs needs him far more than he needs Ayrs. As Frobisher begins to fall in love with Ayrs’s daughter, however, he loses control of himself. His actions become more instinctive, particularly when Ayrs reveals the true machinations behind Frobisher’s affair with Jocasta. Everything up until this point, Frobisher learns, was carefully orchestrated by Ayrs to exploit him. The younger man’s feeling of importance and free will was just an illusion, allowed to grow by an antagonistic old man. Frobisher leaves the house, stealing a pistol and determining to finish his work.

As he obsesses over Eva, Frobisher dedicates himself to the Cloud Atlas Sextet. The composition, as he describes in a letter to Sixsmith, is built on a complex series of interwoven musical strands that captivate the audience, each individual strand adding meaning to the others and to the broader composition itself. In this sense, the sextet is a metaphor for Cloud Atlas itself. The structure of the piece mirrors the structure of the novel, as the six instruments write their own narratives, which build on top of one another into a cohesive whole. Once the piece is finished, however, Frobisher’s world falls apart. He realizes that his feelings for Eva were based on a misunderstanding and—after an embarrassing social incident—he’s told to leave town. Frobisher does more than just leave town; he dies by suicide, confident that his life’s work will endure long after his death. The tragedy of his life is that he’s not as appreciated as he should have been. Although everyone who hears Cloud Atlas Sextet is captivated, Ayrs succeeds in sullying Frobisher’s reputation. His work doesn’t reach the audience it deserves. However, Luisa Rey hears and appreciates it. The composition again mirrors the narrative of the novel, echoing across generations to bind the central characters and add additional meaning to their seemingly disparate lives.