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Foreshadowing
Explanation and Analysis—Robert's Death:
In the following example of allusion from Chapter 10, Robert Frobisher muses on his surroundings as he works on the Cloud Atlas Sextet, laboring late into the night. The “church clock chiming at three A.M.” reminds Frobisher of a line from Mark Twain’s novel, Huckleberry Finn:
Spent last night working on a rumbling ’cello allegro lit by explosive triplets. Silence punctuated by breakneck mousetraps. Remember the church clock chiming three A.M. “I heard an owl,” Huckleberry Finn says, “away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die.” Always haunted me, that line.
Frobisher’s quotation from Huckleberry Finn carries with it a sense of doom: the owl, dog, and whippoorwill all “[cry] about somebody that was going to die.” In Chapter 10 of Cloud Atlas, Frobisher becomes that “somebody.” The line that “always haunted” Frobisher ultimately foreshadows the man’s future suicide.
It is further worth noting that the passage Frobisher selects from Huckleberry Finn contemplates the loneliness of its titular character. Huck is isolated from others, denied his comfortable habits (like smoking), and forced to live with a widow who constantly moralizes about his juvenile delinquency. Frobisher finds himself in a similar situation, emotionally and physically isolated in Belgium.
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