Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Cloud Atlas, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Cycles of History
Greed
Slavery and Imprisonment
Aging and Mortality
Summary
Analysis
10TH—X—1931—Robert Frobisher writes to Rufus Sixsmith that Vyvyan Ayrs has been in a morphine haze for three days. Robert focuses on his own music. One time, he gets so distracted that he works through the night. The next morning, a man named Morty Dhondt stops by to pick Robert up for an excursion. Dhondt drives Robert down to the cemetery where Robert’s brother, Adrian Frobisher, may have been buried during the Great War, then he leaves Robert alone.
Although Vyvyan Ayrs showed some signs of vitality during Robert’s early days with him, his declining health suggests that he can’t ignore his old age forever. Meanwhile, the reveal about Robert’s dead brother helps explain many aspects of Robert’s personality, including his constant feeling that nothing he’ll ever do in life will be good enough.
Themes
Robert struggles to find Adrian’s headstone in all the similar rows. A directory confirms there are no Frobishers in the fields, so Robert lays flowers on the grave of someone with the closest name he can find, “Froame.” Robert thinks back on his brother, and how in his father’s eyes, Robert never measured up to Adrian. He wonders if Adrian was bisexual, or if it’s just Robert who’s that way. Dhondt returns to pick Robert up.
In a darkly humorous moment, Robert lays the flowers meant for his brother on the grave of a random stranger. This passage depicts the futility of trying to honor the dead, since Robert has no way to communicate with Adrian anymore, and he can’t ask him the questions he wishes he’d asked while Adrian was still alive.
Themes
On the drive back, Dhondt’s car hits and injures a pheasant. Robert euthanizes it with a large rock. They get back in the car, but the collision has damaged the car, so Dhondt stops again to inspect it. Robert asks Dhondt how he spent the war, and Dhondt says he and his wife saw the war coming and spent the duration in Johannesburg. Dhondt worries the next war might be so big that there’s nowhere to run. Dhondt argues that war will always be with humanity, but Robert argues that maybe someday, humans will invent weapons powerful enough to destroy civilization. Dhondt agrees this is possible.
Robert’s killing of the pheasant hints that Robert may be capable of violence, but it isn’t clear yet what form that violence will take. Meanwhile Dhondt shows none of Robert’s shame about missing the war. Robert and Dhondt’s discussion about humanity destroying itself with powerful weapons references the later chapters in the book that take place after the apocalypse.
Themes
21ST—X—1931—Robert reports that Ayrs finally seems to be recovering. Meanwhile, Jocasta becomes increasingly needy with Robert. Robert has been working on a piece he calls a “sextet for overlapping soloists.” The next day, Robert gets in an argument with a recovered Ayrs, who may have plagiarized one of Robert’s own pieces. Ayrs protests that all composers take inspiration and that Robert can leave if he doesn’t like his current arrangement.
Robert’s composition seems to be a microcosm for the whole novel itself. Like the Cloud Atlas Sextet, the novel Cloud Atlas is also a “sextet for overlapping soloists,” where each of the six stories focuses on a different character but the stories contain similarities and overlapping elements.
Themes
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A couple days later, Jocasta visits Robert and begs him to stay for her sake. She says that though Ayrs is proud, he still values Robert’s work. Robert decides to be more cautious about sharing work with Ayrs. The next day, Robert has a lunch appointment with Eva and the van de Velde family, who have five daughters, one of whom wants to marry an Englishman and believes Sherlock Holmes is a real person. Robert finds the whole family pretentious. Later, he and Eva bond over a mutual dislike of the van de Veldes. Eva admits that while she was in Switzerland, she missed a certain young man she knows. Robert is surprised but flattered. Eva says she treated Robert poorly but wants to start again.
As Ayrs’s health declines, he seemingly tries to compensate for his own shortcomings by relying more and more on Robert’s work, which builds tension between them. Meanwhile, Robert seems to be growing closer to Eva (even as he has an affair with her mother), setting up yet another possible source of tension. The dinner scene at the van de Velde family household satirizes the pretentiousness of the upper classes and the isolated lives they live, a theme that is relevant in other chapters as well.
Themes
24TH—X—1931—Robert curses Rufus for not replying. Robert wants to get rid of Belgium, since if it never existed, Adrian might still be alive. He complains yet again about his father cutting him off. 29TH—X—1931—Robert confesses that he’s falling in love with Eva and daydreams about her often.
Robert’s unusually short letters suggest that his behavior is becoming more erratic and perhaps isn’t thinking as clearly as usual.
Themes
6TH—XI—1931—Robert says that while divorces can get complicated, his “divorce” from Ayrs happens quickly. One morning, Ayrs asks Robert to put together some ideas for an upcoming work. Robert doesn’t like the idea of being a co-composer, but in fact, Ayrs himself wants credit for refining Robert’s work. Robert accuses him of plagiarism, which causes Ayres to get defensive. He threatens to dismiss Robert and reveals that he knows Robert is having sex with Jocasta. The argument gets heated. Eventually, Ayrs recommends that Robert go away, work on the new piece, then come back the next day, pretending nothing happened. Robert goes along with Ayrs’s plan so that he’ll have more time to think.
This new longer letter reveals why his previous two letters were so erratic—Robert’s working relationship with Ayrs has finally reached its breaking point. Robert and Ayrs are both extremely proud: Ayrs can’t stand the idea of growing old and irrelevant, while Robert can’t stand the idea of someone else taking credit for his own work. In his characteristically eccentric fashion, Ayrs tries to solve this conflict by pretending it never happened (or perhaps he’s even experiencing memory loss), but Robert holds grudges and has had enough.
Themes
Robert goes out walking in some fields, full of anger. He daydreams about Eva and concludes that while he can’t imagine working another day for Ayrs, he also can’t imagine leaving Eva forever. The next morning, at 4:00 a.m., Robert sneaks out. He stops in Ayrs’s bedroom feels a strange impulse to steal his pistol and some bullets. As Robert watches Ayrs sleep, he feels another strange urge to kill Ayrs but doesn’t, knowing that it would make no sense. Robert stops by Eva’s room, which is empty since she’s at school. Finally, Robert makes his way to Bruges and finds a hotel.
Robert builds up Eva in his mind, expecting things from her that no human can possibly live up to. Nevertheless, he remains convinced that his plan is a good one. Robert’s impulse to steal Ayrs’s gun seems to be the direct influence of what Zachry would call Old Georgie, but for Robert, it’s just an intrusive thought.
Themes
In a postscript, Robert reassures Rufus that he’s feeling fine. He also mentions that when he was leaving, he just so happened to find the second half of The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing.
The fact that Robert reassures Rufus he’s feeling fine suggests that Rufus has noticed something strange about Robert’s letters and brought it up in his own correspondence.
Themes
NEAR THE ENDTH—XI—1931—Robert works nonstop on his Cloud Atlas Sextet. He thinks that he’s doing his best work and is feeling well. His only regret is that he keeps waiting for Eva to show up at his hotel.
As Robert’s letters become more eccentric, he doesn’t even give them real dates, suggesting that time has started to break down for him. This parallels the structure of the book itself, which plays with time in complicated ways, collapsing past, present, and future together.
Themes
25TH—XI—1931—Robert has a cold. Later, the hotel manager comes by, demanding to see some proof that Robert will be able to pay for his room. The next day, Robert feels better but still longs for Eva or even Jocasta. He tries to intercept Eva at an event at the van de Veldes’ house, but a butler refuses him entrance. Robert gets one foot in the door and shouts to Eva. She comes to the door, but instead of embracing him, she asks with disgust what happened to him. Robert looks at himself in the mirror and remembers he’s been forgetting to shave lately.
Eva’s absence suggests that she may not reciprocate Robert’s feelings, but this possibility doesn’t even seem to occur to him. Robert’s sickness in his body seems to go hand-in-hand with a deteriorating mental state. His forgetfulness about shaving could be a sign of depression. The mirror, which Robert looks into, is an important symbol, given that Cloud Atlas has a mirror structure, with stories in the first half reflected again in the second half.
Themes
Eva is with a handsome young Swiss man. Robert gets angry at him for handling Eva, but Eva protests that the man is her fiancé. Eva tried to tell Robert about the young man earlier, but Robert assumed she was talking about him. Robert feels humiliated, and when Eva’s fiancé taunts him, Robert pounces on him and kicks him. After that, Robert feels better.
Robert finds out in humiliating fashion that all of his fantasies about Eva were based on delusions rather than reality. While Robert has hinted at his capacity for violence before, here he lets it out, totally abandoning the typical behavior of polite society, which suggests that he is moving further and further from reality.
Themes
About a week later, a man Robert doesn’t know visits him at his hotel room. The man, Verplancke, warns Robert that Eva’s fiancé has an influential father who might press assault charges. Verplancke says Robert might be able to avoid trouble if he leaves Bruges within the next week. Finally, Verplancke asks to get a preview of Robert’s new work, and Robert allows it. Verplancke asks for a full copy when it’s published.
While Robert feels good about assaulting Eva’s fiancé at first, he soon learns that he will have to face the consequences of his actions. Robert must leave town, starting his life over again, just as he did when he first came to Belgium.
Themes
QUARTER PAST FOUR IN THE MORNING, 12TH—XII—1931—Robert confesses that he plans to shoot himself through the roof of the mouth with Ayrs’s gun in about 45 minutes. He says he actually saw Rufus at his hotel, although Rufus didn’t see him. In fact, Robert had to move to a new hotel after another visit from the manager at his last hotel.
The chronology of the letter is momentarily confusing: Robert says he’s already shot himself, and yet he still seems alive enough to write a letter. This reflects the delay in communication with letters—Robert is alive when he writes the letter but will be dead by the time Rufus reads it, making the letter essentially his suicide note. Robert’s suicide foreshadows how Rufus himself will die of a gunshot wound, which the newspapers will report as a suicide.
Themes
Robert says he knew he’d never live to 25. He thinks lots of people give suicide a bad name, but the Japanese were right to consider suicide courageous. He tells Rufus not to blame his suicide on love, which would be ridiculous, given how briefly he loved Eva. Robert writes that he’s made arrangements for Rufus to receive his Cloud Atlas Sextet, as well as the rest of Adam Ewing’s journal. Robert laments that he wishes he had been born as music instead of as a human. As the hour of Robert’s suicide approaches, he feels like Adrian must have felt when he knew he was going to die. He figures no one stays dead for long and that soon enough, he and Rufus will meet again.
Robert’s final message is even more erratic than his earlier letters. Even as he prepares to die, however, Robert cares about his pride, taking great pains to reassure Rufus that he didn’t kill himself over Eva. The fact that Robert chooses to send Rufus the Cloud Atlas Sextet suggests that Robert still wants a part of himself to live on, even as he prepares to die. By sending Rufus the remainder of Adam Ewing’s journal, Robert sets up the last chapter, closing the final loop in the novel’s structure.
Themes
