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
Throughout the chapter, a character called the Archivist asks several questions of a prisoner named Sonmi~451, who tells her life story. Sonmi is a “fabricant” who works at a restaurant seemingly owned by a man named Papa Song. Fabricants (human clones) don’t get breaks and rarely wonder about the outside world. Once a year, Papa Song hosts a “Star Sermon” where every fabricant gets a star pinned to their collars, and, to the envy of the other workers, the fabricants with 12 stars get taken away in Papa Song’s Ark to Hawaii.
The restaurant that Sonmi~451 lives and works in seems to be the very same café that Vyvyan Ayrs dreamed about before composing his best work. This illustrates how, in addition to the book’s nested structure, where each chapter is a story inside the next chapter’s story, the stories have other, less linear connections to each other. The futuristic terminology and character names in the chapter make it clear that this story contains elements of science fiction. Sonmi’s number, “451,” is likely a tribute to Ray Bradbury’s famous science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451.
Themes
The Archivist asks about Yoona~939, and Sonmi says she was the fabricant Sonmi knew best. Yoona was dignified, refusing to answer drunk customers. The Archivist is surprised to hear of a fabricant with a personality, but Sonmi says it’s a myth that fabricants don’t have personalities, so that “purebloods” (naturally born humans, as opposed to synthetically born clone “fabricants”) can feel better about enslaving them. Sonmi first realized that Yoona was different because of her way of speaking, which became increasingly complex. Particularly while ascending (which both Sonmi and Yoona did), Yoona’s ability to speak became more complex.
The novel is ambiguous at first about what Sonmi is—whether she’s a human, a robot, or something else. Her answers to the Archivist make it clear that she talks like a sentient being. As the chapter progresses, it becomes clear that, aside from being a clone and being born in a lab instead of a womb, Sonmi is physically more or less a “normal” human too, which makes the cruel treatment of her and the other fabricants all the more shocking.
Themes
The Archivist asks Yoona if she was happy back in the restaurant. Yoona says it depends on the definition—if happiness is the lack of adversity, then fabricants are the happiest beings in existence, but if happiness is a sense of purpose, then fabricants are about as happy as enslaved humans. Yoona suggests that all of “corpocracy” relies on slavery, even though the word “slave” has been abolished.
Corpocracy is a fictional form of government that seems to imagine a world where corporations are explicitly more important than people. Yoona’s criticisms of corpocracy strongly resemble economist and philosopher Karl Marx’s criticisms of capitalism, perhaps suggesting that corpocracy is a futuristic possible evolution of capitalism.
Themes
The Archivist reveals that his friends think he’s crazy because of the risks he’s taken to interview Sonmi, who is a well-known heretic. He asks about Seer Rhee, whose journal played a big role in Sonmi’s trial. Sonmi describes Seer Rhee as a weak man devoted to corporate hierarchy, whose wife uses her influence to sleep with young male aides in the corporation. Yoona, who acted more like a pureblood than a replicant, posed a threat to Seer Rhee’s career.
Seer Rhee is a human manager (with “seer” being a title, perhaps a futuristic contraction of “overseer”). A seer is also someone who sees the future, connecting back to the novel’s eye motif as well as recalling the Prophetess (the ship that Adam Ewing sails on).
Themes
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Sonmi continues her story. One day, Yoona told Sonmi the definition of the word “secret.” The concept is unfamiliar to Sonmi, who is used to having Papa Song know everything she knows. Yoona takes Sonmi to the office of Seer Rhee, who is unconscious on his desk. Yoona explains that every 10 days, Seer Rhee drinks Soap, which makes him unresponsive for the whole night. Yoona takes Rhee’s keys and leads Sonmi through a door to a dark room. Yoona has hidden a flashlight in the dark room—Sonmi has never seen anything like the flashlight before.
Soap’s name comes from the fact that it wipes clean the minds of the fabricants. Seer Rhee’s use of Soap seems to have clear parallels to alcohol abuse (since alcohol can cause memory blackouts and since highly concentrated alcohol makes a good substance for cleaning). The flashlight that Yoona shows Sonmi symbolizes how she will “enlighten” her by introducing her to new knowledge.
Themes
According to Papa Song’s Catechism, replicants may not keep anything for themselves, since doing so would cheat Papa Song out of his investment. Over the next few months, Yoona takes Sonmi back to her secret room several more times. Yoona tells Sonmi she has doubts about Papa Song and even the corpocracy itself. At first, Sonmi begs Yoona to stop being blasphemous.
A catechism is a summary of Christian beliefs (usually referring to Roman Catholic beliefs), and it takes the form of a question-and-answer document. And so, Sonmi’s conversation with the Archivist itself resembles a catechism. Mitchell may be referencing James Joyce, whose modernist, multi-genre novel Ulysses also has a chapter that takes the form of a catechism.
Themes
One night, Yoona tells Sonmi she wants to flee the restaurant. Sonmi resists, both because leaving is prohibited and because she believes that Yoona’s dreams of an outside world full of forests and mountains are all a fairy tale. Sonmi believes Yoona had a condition that “consumers” (citizens in a corpocracy) know as chronic depression.
The passage explores how materialism promises happiness but ultimately fails to provide satisfaction. The choice of the word “consumers” to describe people living under a corpocracy suggests how in this dystopian future, people have become passive consumers of what the government gives them.
Themes
Back in the present, The Archivist asks Sonmi what happened with Yoona on a specific New Year’s Eve. In her story, Sonmi recalls a children’s party at the restaurant. Yoona has not spoken any more about escape to Sonmi or even acknowledged her presence recently. Suddenly, Yoona picks up one of the boys and carries him out. The “purebloods” watching assume Yoona must just be someone’s maid.
Yoona taught Sonmi the meaning of the word “secret,” and this passage reveals that in fact, Yoona has been keeping her own secret from Sonmi and the rest of the fabricants. The children’s party makes the class divide clear, showing how the fabricants exist solely to serve the purebloods.
Themes
Suddenly, the kidnapped child’s mother sees Yoona, just at the elevator door is closing. The whole restaurant erupts in chaos. Seer Rhee comes out to see what’s happening, but he gets trampled by customers. The elevator comes back down, and when the doors open, an enforcer shoots Yoona several times.
A major theme of the Luisa Rey chapter was the failure and corruption of traditional institutions of justice, like police departments. The futuristic “enforcers” of Sonmi’s chapter similar fail to uphold justice by using brutally violent tactics against Yoona.
Themes
In the present, The Archivist says he saw the image of Yoona full of bullet holes on the news too. He and people like him realize that this news about Yoona changes everything—it means that all fabricants may be dangerous.
The Archivist’s reaction to the image of dead Yoona shows how the government successfully turned the image into propaganda to make people afraid of fabricants, instead of more sympathetic toward them.
Themes
Sonmi continues her story. Although the restaurant fabricants usually get their memories wiped with Soap at the end of the day, when they go to sleep that night, they wake up the next morning with most of their memories about Yoona’s body still intact. That year, instead of a Starring Ceremony, Papa Song gives an Anti-Union Sermon.
The fabricants get to keep their memories of Yoona’s death because the memory could deter them from their own escape attempts. Papa Song’s speech represents another example of how propaganda affects the lives of the fabricants.
Themes
At the sermon, Papa Song tells of terrorists called Union who must have infected Yoona. This event damaged the trust of the consumers in the country, so now all the replicants of the restaurant must work hard to regain the consumers’ trust. Much later at her trial, Sonmi doubts Yoona could have been a Union member, since the Union had no opportunity to recruit her.
The name “Union” likely comes from labor unions, which in the real world, often represent the opposite of corporations, and so the Union is the opposite of the corpocracy. Unions generally represent the interests of workers, and so the Union seems to be interested in fabricants, which make up a significant portion of the workforce in this dystopia.
Themes
After the sermon on New Year’s, the restaurant goes back to normal, mostly. The Starring Ceremony is unusually subdued. After the ceremony, medics examine all the replicants. They’re puzzled to see that Sonmi has a birthmark near her shoulder that looks like a comet, since fabricants don’t usually have birthmarks. Sonmi has known for a while that she’s different—in fact, she seems to be on the brink of ascending, based on how she holds on to memories longer than the other fabricants. For several months, she lives with the fear that her masters will discover her new awareness.
Sonmi’s comet birthmark connects her to the previous characters in the story with the same birthmark. While some people in Sonmi’s world refuse to accept that fabricants are real people, Sonmi’s birthmark proves that she is an individual, with thoughts and feelings just like Robert Frobisher, Luisa Rey, Timothy Cavendish, and the other characters with the comet birth mark.
Themes
One night, Sonmi wakes to the sound of breaking glass and goes to investigate. She goes over to Seer Rhee’s room and finds him face-down on the floor and bleeding next to a used Soap container, apparently dead. It seems to be suicide by Soap overdose. Sonmi goes back to bed and pretends nothing happened.
Seer Rhee’s death symbolizes the emptiness of life under a corpocracy, even for humans. Despite having an enslaved workforce at his disposal, Rhee still wasn’t happy, suggesting that consumerism doesn’t actually lead to happiness.
Themes
The next morning, a man in a dark suit comes to see Sonmi and ask her questions. Sonmi initially thinks he might be an enforcer, but in fact, Mr. Chang is the chauffeur for a wealthy man. Chang offers Sonmi the opportunity to leave the restaurant and finish her investment elsewhere—otherwise, she can stay at the restaurant and wait for DNA sniffers to connect her to Seer Rhee.
Mr. Chang is a mysterious character when he first appears, and it isn’t clear whether he intends to help or hurt Sonmi. The “investment” that fabricants must pay off by working seems to be a futuristic parody of how many people in the real world live in debt, whether it’s from credit cards, education loans, or a mortgage.
Themes
Sonmi agrees to leave with Chang. While in the elevator, she experiences nausea. Outside, all the stimuli overwhelm her even more. Eventually, Sonmi and Chang make it to Mount Taemosan, the university where Sonmi will be staying. Sonmi finds her new surroundings much dirtier than the restaurant. Chang leads her to the lab of Boom-Sook Kim, who is annoyed that Sonmi has arrived so early, since it conflicts with a conference he’s supposed to attend.
Many of the characters in Cloud Atlas come from remote islands, and Sonmi’s character puts an interesting spin on this trend—although she lives in a busy urban center, her highly restricted lifestyle has made her as sheltered as any remote islander from the Pacific.
Themes
With Boom-Sook away, Sonmi spends three days at the university doing nothing but staying in place and observing. Eventually, a replicant named Wing~027 comes and asks Sonmi what she’s doing. He is a “disasterman,” able to survive in extreme conditions. He tells Sonmi that she’ll need knowledge and that the best way to get knowledge is to teach herself to read. After a brief second meeting with Wing, Sonmi mostly teaches herself. Before Boom-Sook gets back, Sonmi has completed elementary school. It takes six more months for her to complete the equivalent of secondary school.
The presence of disastermen in the story hints at apocalyptic conditions outside of the relatively stable area where Sonmi herself lives. Like Yoona before him, Wing serves as a mentor to Sonmi, who becomes important not for what he teaches her but for how he encourages her to learn for herself. Although Sonmi is like a pureblood human in many ways, that she’s a fast learner suggests that in some ways, she even surpasses pureblood humans.
Themes
Boom-Sook is no Abolitionist, but he drinks and gambles a lot because he has a rich father, so this gives Sonmi a lot of freedom. He talks to Sonmi the way most other pureblood humans talk to their cats. For nine months, Sonmi’s sentience grows, seemingly without anyone noticing.
Boom-Sook is a buffoon, but this ends up being a good thing for Sonmi, because it allows her to spend her own time how she pleases, learning new things about the world.
Themes
One day, Sonmi overhears another student, Hae-Joo Im, telling Boom-Sook that a mutual friend of theirs accidentally burned Wing~027 up in an experiment. The other student finds this funny, but Boom-Sook looks at Sonmi. He doesn’t note any reaction from her, but in fact, Sonmi is furious.
Wing had at least the intelligence of a human, so his death should be horrifying, but it’s funny to the grad students, suggesting that they refuse to see fabricants as human, in spite of all the evidence suggesting it.
Themes
Over the summer recess, Boom-Sook is supposed to lock Sonmi up in a holding room, but he doesn’t bother. He goes off crossbow hunting fabricant elk. Sonmi locks herself into a small room for 50 days and learns all about modern culture. When Boom-Sook comes back, he’s moody because he lost a lot of money gambling while he was on vacation. Time passes. It becomes autumn, and Sonmi sees snow for the first time.
Boom-Sook’s crossbow hunting seems anachronistic in this setting, but the fabricant elk give his trip a futuristic touch. His crossbow represents the return of the past, but it also connects to the future, since crossbows will play an important role in the following chapter.
Themes
One snowy night, on Sextet Eve, Boom-Sook and some of his friends (including Hae-Joo Im) get drunk. Boom-Sook’s friend taunts him, saying that his crossbow-hunting stories are probably all made up. Boom-Sook vows to prove that he has good aim with a demonstration. At the encouragement of his friends, he shoots a melon off Sonmi’s head with his crossbow. His friends still aren’t satisfied, so next he shoots a mango off her head. Finally, they try a plum, but this time, Boom-Sook hits Sonmi’s ear.
“Sextet Eve” is yet another example of the importance of the number six in the story. Although Boom-Sook seems at first to be an unlikely ally to Sonmi, this passage reveals that he is fickle and willing to gamble with her life all for the sake of impressing his friends.
Themes
Just then, Boardman Mephi storms in. Boardman Mephi scolds Boom-Sook and calls Chang to come in. Chang treats the injury on Sonmi’s ear. Mephi informs Boom-Sook that his doctorate program is over. Chang tells Sonmi that she’s coming with him and Mephi. They transfer her to another part of the campus and take Sonmi to a room so nice that she originally thinks it must be Mephi’s office.
Mephi’s big entrance suggests right away that he is an important character and that Sonmi is about to enter the next phase of her life. Like Robert Frobisher before him, Boom-Sook pushes his privilege too far and suffers the consequences.
Themes
Mephi apologizes for not realizing earlier that Sonmi had ascended so far. Sonmi, however, remains cautious of a trap and doesn’t want to reveal everything she knows. As it turns out, the university already knows about her ascension because the library keeps track of downloads, and Sonmi has such an unusual checkout history. While Sonmi remains cautious, in some ways she is glad she doesn’t have to pretend anymore.
Although this story takes place in a futuristic setting, books are a time-honored way to learn, suggesting that even in the future, some elements of culture from the past remain important. After learning more about the world, Sonmi has learned to be careful around new people she meets, regardless of how friendly they seem.
Themes
The discovery of Sonmi’s intelligence caused a lot of controversy at the university, with some wanting to dissect her brain. Mephi wanted to just let her remain undisturbed for the time being, but Boom-Sook’s crossbow game forced them to act. Now, Mephi proposes that Sonmi should become a student at Taemosan and have a “Soul” implanted in her metal collar so that she can come and go as she pleases.1111
Even people on the campus who recognize Sonmi’s intelligence want to dissect her, reflecting how deeply many people in this world have internalized their prejudices that fabricants represent something less than human.
Themes
Sonmi learns that both she and Yoona were so well-suited to ascend—before the restaurant, they both were at a tech institute in Baikal, where the political situation was unstable, and their original scientists died suddenly in a car bomb. Now, on the Taemosan campus, Sonmi enjoys going to lectures but dislikes the cold because she’s still used to being in a hot restaurant. Some students at Sonmi’s first lecture pick on her, asking her to make them food. Later, Mephi tells Sonmi that some purebloods dislike her because fabricants are like a mirror, and many people don’t like what they see. Later, an enforcer takes Sonmi to her next lecture.
Sonmi struggles to adjust to life on campus, reflecting the culture shock that many people experience when they go somewhere new to get an education. People in the corpocracy don’t like facing the reality that fabricants (whom the corpocracy exploits) are much like pureblood humans; Sonmi’s presence on the campus upsets many of the purebloods because it forces them to confront her humanity—and their complicity in her and other fabricants’ exploitation.
Themes
At Sonmi’s third lecture, the other students are curious. Afterward, though members of the media swarm her and she’s nearly injured as she tries to escape the mob. From then on, she and Mephi agree that she should take her classes remotely. In between classes, Sonmi spends hours undergoing experiments that last a long time and make her miserable. One day, Sonmi laments that her curiosity is diminishing, so Mephi recommends that she get out more.
This passage shows that, while not all people react to Sonmi with fear, even some of the positive reactions affect her in a negative way. Sonmi finds that her new freedoms come with new responsibilities and that she still has duties to perform, even outside of Papa Song’s.
Themes
On Mephi’s orders, a postgrad named Hae-Joo Im comes to Sonmi’s apartment. He is a friend of Boom-Sook’s who was there when Boom-Sook fired the crossbow at Sonmi. He is nervous around Sonmi because of what Boom-Sook did and because everything Sonmi says sounds so smart to him. Sonmi finds him irritating at first but tries to put up with him to please Mephi. Hae-Joo proposes taking Sonmi away from the university to a shopping district.
Hae-Joo shows Sonmi that, while books are important for education, they aren’t everything. Education is also a social experience, and Hae-Joo teaches Sonmi things about life that she can’t learn from a book.
Themes
A taxi driver extends Hae-Joo and Sonmi’s trip to show them some landmarks. They make it to the shopping district, and Sonmi is amazed at all the things for sale. The area has many fabricants, so Sonmi doesn’t stand out, although one woman assumes that Sonmi is a pureblood who has undergone cosmetic surgery to look like a fabricant. Sonmi doesn’t fully understand what she sees, but she feels her curiosity return to her.
This section expands on the world of the story, revealing that Sonmi has only seen a fraction of it. Fittingly for a corpocracy, the shopping district is one of the most important parts of the city. The pureblood woman’s reference to cosmetic surgery to look like a fabricant seems to be a humorous example of a futuristic version of what is today called cultural appropriation.
Themes
Sonmi decides she and Hae-Joo must go back to her old restaurant. Cautiously, they descend on the elevator to enter the restaurant. Papa Song stands on a platform near the entrance, and Sonmi suddenly realizes he’s just a hologram. She tries to speak to some of the fabricants she used to work with, but none of them recognize her.
Sonmi’s new intelligence allows her to see how hollow her old life was. As a hologram, Papa Song literally lacks substance and is simply an avatar for his company. Seeing the ignorance of her former coworkers helps Sonmi understand how far she herself has come in a relatively short period of time.
Themes
Overall, Sonmi finds her return to Papa Song’s anticlimactic. She determines she used to be a “slave” at the restaurant, and at the university, she’s just “a more privileged slave.” However, after Sonmi’s excursions with Hae-Joo become a regular occurrence, she begins to like him better. She learns from him that Taemosan doesn’t have a unified campus government but lots of different groups vying for influence.
Sonmi begins using the Marxist-tinged language that Yoona used earlier, suggesting a growing consciousness of her role in society and a growing dissatisfaction with the world around her. Sonmi’s journey raises the question of whether ignorance might be bliss, since at least at first, Sonmi doesn’t become any happier from realizing the truth about her life, especially since she lacks the ability to create meaningful changes.
Themes
Hae-Joo likes “disneys” (movies) and introduces them to Sonmi. One of his favorites is The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, which comes from a time before the current government in the early 21st century. In the present, the Archivist is surprised, since he himself could never get access to such restricted contraband. Although he regrets this, he believes that corpocracy is not just the latest in a series of political systems but in fact the natural world order, so he follows the rules.
In the novel, characters refer to films as “disneys” suggesting that The Walt Disney Company has become so large that “disney” has become the generic word for a film. Since Cloud Atlas’s 2003 publication, the Disney corporation has only expanded, making the prediction prescient.
Themes
Sonmi continues her story. Hae-Joo shows her the first 50 minutes of The Ghastly Ordeal before pausing during an important scene when the protagonist, (Timothy Cavendish) has a stroke. Just then, Hae-Joo gets news that enforcers have stormed campus and already arrested Mephi. They have orders to kill Sonmi. Chang, however, is still free and waiting with the car. Before they leave, Hae-Joo tells Sonmi that he’s been hiding his true identity from her.
The parts of Timothy Cavendish’s story that Sonmi watches seem to align exactly with what happens in Chapter 4, right up to the same cliffhanger ending. Sonmi’s story ends with its own cliffhanger, right before Hae-Joo has a chance to reveal his true identity to Sonmi.
Themes
