Re: Cloud Atlas - epic film about karma and reincarnation
Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2012 5:09 pm
This is quite a detailed analysis of the story and some philosophical implications:
Reality and Perception in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas
by Mark Woodring
David Mitchell’s postmodern exploration of perception and its influence on reality, the story within a story (within a story…) Cloud Atlas. Mitchell combines six distinct narratives in an interlaced storyline, nesting each section within the others, each section directly referencing the one preceding it while also hinting those that lie ahead.
Whether revolutionary or gimmicky, this presentation of intertwined narratives demonstrates that human reality is not determined by actuality or factuality, but rather by the perception of events and how those perceptions are presented and interpreted. Cloud Atlas clearly demonstrates the fragility of reality, which is manipulated both by perception – eyewitnesses – and by time...
The idea that an individual’s perception can be made to change by forces outside of themselves, regardless of how much time elapses between the event and the individual perceiving it, is both a powerful and disturbing one. The idea is very explicit here: what we see, or hear, or read, is always what we get, but may not be what actually was. When our interpretation of the world is dependent on information not directly ours, we must accept that the resulting perception of reality is not accurate.
The use of the phrase “elastic moment” reinforces the idea of the fluidity of time and perception, and the idea that the “ends” disappear “into the past and the future” is another method of shifting our perspective. Here, the past and future that are the beginning and ending of the novel, both adrift on a ship in a more primitive time than those eras related between them. By completing this circle of time and events, the “ends” of time disappear into one another, which drives us to examine the cyclical nature of the realities of the novel.
In “An Orison of Sonmi-451,” Mitchell presents a bleak future in which cloned workers called fabricants perform various undesirable tasks for humanity while being kept in a mentally oblivious state designed to keep them from questioning the system in which they serve. Because their owners control the clones memories, they rob them of unique experiences, leaving them with no past and with only hope for a future. That future is solely dependent on what the masters of their society grant to them and is based solely the information provided by them. When pressed by Sonmi about his role in the charade that is her trial, it is the archivist who ironically makes the most telling declaration yet about the fluidity of perception and history: “A duplicitous archivist wouldn’t be much use to future historians” (Mitchell 189). The young archivist never stops to consider that an archivist could be loyal to something other than the truth of an event. This is the fallacy of recorded history. Since future history is dependent solely on what is recorded in the present and on its recorder, how can we believe anything, much less know it, to be accurate? The Utopia that all societies hope to achieve exists only as an idea, living among the virtual past and future, but becoming lost among the actual.
Clearly, then, what we see in Cloud Atlas is an interrogation of the accuracy of reality, specifically due to man’s tendency, consciously or unconsciously, to mold it to conform to his current needs or expectations. As a result, no version of reality is able to function as anything but a story which may or may not be accurate to any significant degree.
Or put more simply: “does it matter?” That answer can only be: no, for regardless of the reality in which we find ourselves, virtual or actual, it is the reality in which we find ourselves, and is thus the reality in which we must live. Fenced in by perception’s assumptions and assertions, we can only act on what we believe we know. All other action is irrelevant.
http://faculty.weber.edu/vramirez/mark's6010.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Reality and Perception in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas
by Mark Woodring
David Mitchell’s postmodern exploration of perception and its influence on reality, the story within a story (within a story…) Cloud Atlas. Mitchell combines six distinct narratives in an interlaced storyline, nesting each section within the others, each section directly referencing the one preceding it while also hinting those that lie ahead.
Whether revolutionary or gimmicky, this presentation of intertwined narratives demonstrates that human reality is not determined by actuality or factuality, but rather by the perception of events and how those perceptions are presented and interpreted. Cloud Atlas clearly demonstrates the fragility of reality, which is manipulated both by perception – eyewitnesses – and by time...
The idea that an individual’s perception can be made to change by forces outside of themselves, regardless of how much time elapses between the event and the individual perceiving it, is both a powerful and disturbing one. The idea is very explicit here: what we see, or hear, or read, is always what we get, but may not be what actually was. When our interpretation of the world is dependent on information not directly ours, we must accept that the resulting perception of reality is not accurate.
The use of the phrase “elastic moment” reinforces the idea of the fluidity of time and perception, and the idea that the “ends” disappear “into the past and the future” is another method of shifting our perspective. Here, the past and future that are the beginning and ending of the novel, both adrift on a ship in a more primitive time than those eras related between them. By completing this circle of time and events, the “ends” of time disappear into one another, which drives us to examine the cyclical nature of the realities of the novel.
In “An Orison of Sonmi-451,” Mitchell presents a bleak future in which cloned workers called fabricants perform various undesirable tasks for humanity while being kept in a mentally oblivious state designed to keep them from questioning the system in which they serve. Because their owners control the clones memories, they rob them of unique experiences, leaving them with no past and with only hope for a future. That future is solely dependent on what the masters of their society grant to them and is based solely the information provided by them. When pressed by Sonmi about his role in the charade that is her trial, it is the archivist who ironically makes the most telling declaration yet about the fluidity of perception and history: “A duplicitous archivist wouldn’t be much use to future historians” (Mitchell 189). The young archivist never stops to consider that an archivist could be loyal to something other than the truth of an event. This is the fallacy of recorded history. Since future history is dependent solely on what is recorded in the present and on its recorder, how can we believe anything, much less know it, to be accurate? The Utopia that all societies hope to achieve exists only as an idea, living among the virtual past and future, but becoming lost among the actual.
Clearly, then, what we see in Cloud Atlas is an interrogation of the accuracy of reality, specifically due to man’s tendency, consciously or unconsciously, to mold it to conform to his current needs or expectations. As a result, no version of reality is able to function as anything but a story which may or may not be accurate to any significant degree.
Or put more simply: “does it matter?” That answer can only be: no, for regardless of the reality in which we find ourselves, virtual or actual, it is the reality in which we find ourselves, and is thus the reality in which we must live. Fenced in by perception’s assumptions and assertions, we can only act on what we believe we know. All other action is irrelevant.
http://faculty.weber.edu/vramirez/mark's6010.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;