The comet-shaped birthmark that several characters share represents all that connects humans across time and space. Many comets, like the famous Hailey’s Comet, follow an elliptical orbit and travel past Earth at regular intervals. Similarly, the comet-birthmark characters seem to be reincarnations of one another, where each new character is like a comet passing by Earth. Notably, the comet-birthmark characters do not all have the same personality—Luisa Rey is a journalist willing to put her own life at risk, whereas Robert Frobisher is selfish and mostly just cares about securing his own wealth and reputation. But the characters do have a few things in common. All the comet-birthmark characters practice some form of writing (Robert is a composer, Luisa is a journalist, Timothy Cavendish is a publisher and memoirist, Sonmi~451 is a manifesto-writer, and Meronym is an anthropologist). Similarly, these characters struggle to overcome the greed of the other characters around them, with the greed often leading to violence. While on a literal level the comet suggests that the novel takes place in a universe with a Buddhism-derived type of reincarnation, on a metaphorical level it also suggests that the struggles of past humans are not so different from the struggles of present and future humans, even if these struggles take different shapes.
The Comet Birthmark Quotes in Cloud Atlas
She plays with that birthmark in the hollow of my shoulder, the one you said resembles a comet—can’t abide the woman dabbling with my skin.
Robert Frobisher mentions a comet-shaped birthmark between his shoulder blade and collarbone.
I just don’t believe in this crap. I just don’t believe it. I don’t.
Truth is singular. Its “versions” are mistruths.
Zachry my old pa was a wyrd buggah, I won’t naysay it now he’s died. Oh, most o’ Pa’s yarnin’s was jus’ musey duck fartin’ an’ in his loonsome old age he even b’liefed Meronym the Prescient was his presh b’loved Sonmi, yay, he ’sisted it, he said he knowed it all by birthmarks an’ comets’n’all.
Spent the fortnight gone in the music room, reworking my year’s fragments into a “sextet for overlapping soloists”: piano, clarinet, ‘cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor: in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan’t know until it’s finished, and by then it’ll be too late, but it’s the first thing I think of when I wake, and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep.
Time cannot permeate this sabbatical. We do not stay dead long. Once my Luger lets me go, my birth, next time around, will be upon me in a heartbeat. Thirteen years from now we’ll meet again at Gresham, ten years later I’ll be back in this same room, holding this same gun, composing this same letter, my resolution as perfect as my many-headed sextet. Such elegant certainties comfort me at this quiet hour.
The Comet Birthmark Symbol Timeline in Cloud Atlas
