Cloud Atlas

The longer the dialogue between the Archivist and Sonmi continues, the more the Archivist begins to harbor doubts about the society. Sonmi’s chapters use the inherent juxtaposition of dialogue to create different interpretations of the world. They build different truths, which challenge and conflict with one another. In Sonmi’s first chapter, the Archivist tells her that her “version of the truth is what matters” (187). In Sonmi’s second chapter, the Archivist can’t believe her claims and dismisses them as “preposterous,” though doubts begin to enter into the Archivist’s dialogue. When the Archivist accuses Sonmi of adopting the rebels’ propaganda, she turns the accusation around and says that the Archivist has “embraced Nea So Corpros propaganda wholeheartedly” (342). As such, the dialogue creates competing versions of the world and implies that Sonmi—as the person who has glimpsed the truth beyond the veil of government-constructed reality—has a better understanding of the true nature of existence. Nevertheless, the dialogue between the Archivist and Sonmi structurally demonstrates how reality is subjective.

Objectively, the stakes involved in The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish are much lower than those portrayed in Sonmi’s chapters. While Cavendish simply wants to escape from a retirement home, Sonmi wants to bring down a dystopian government. He’s threatened with a dull life, but she’s sentenced to execution. Despite the massive disparity in these stakes, Cavendish’s story becomes an important part of Sonmi’s life. As a final request, she asks to see the end of the film based on Cavendish’s story. Her viewing was interrupted earlier in the novel, but the brief time she spent with it had a significant impression on her. Sonmi glimpsed another world, one before the emergence of corporate dystopia. For the fabricant who had begun her ascension, the individualism and the sense of agency in the face of authority provided her with a template on which she could base her own rebellion. Cavendish may be an absurd figure, but Sonmi finds inspiration in his chaos, just as Zachry finds inspirations in her manifesto even though he doesn’t understand the context in which it was written. This underscores the novel’s theme of Eternal Recurrence.

At the end of the chapter, as her execution awaits, Sonmi makes a final revelation. She tells the Archivist that everything in her story has been arranged by the government. A great conspiracy is afoot, she suggests, to manufacture a controlled opposition to the government with her as the figurehead. Sonmi has agreed to go along with this conspiracy because she sees no other option. In this respect, Sonmi’s story echoes and diverges from Luisa’s story. Whereas Luisa sought out a conspiracy and wanted to challenge it, Sonmi discovered herself at the center of a conspiracy and decided to embrace it. They react in opposite ways but with the same intention in mind. Sonmi explains that she played along with the government’s actions because her manifesto has nevertheless reached many billions of people. She sacrifices herself to spread her story, just like Luisa told Sixsmith she’d do when they were trapped in an elevator. Both Sonmi and Luisa fundamentally want to challenge authority, one by exposing a conspiracy and one by propagating a conspiracy. Thus, the novel plays on the theme of Authority and Greed through the theme of Eternal Recurrence. Both characters feel driven to challenge their society’s greed by assuming a more altruistic authority, and the dynamic of oppression and rebellion (which highlights the theme of Slavery and Freedom) plays out similarly in two different eras. In addition, though Sonmi could find the government’s role in her rebellion (to make her an example) horrifying, she chooses to embrace it for its inherent good, hinting at Nietzsche’s original conception of Eternal Recurrence (see Themes).