Cloud Atlas is starting to do funny things. While I had a lot of faith in the book from pretty early on, it has certainly become more engrossing.
I especially enjoy, with our impending Palin Presidency (vote), the ideas we’ve seen in the last two chapters about free will, slavery, colonization, culture, and god. The idea of Sonmi working incredible shifts as a clone and not being able to see natural sunlight is certainly a bold suggestion about our future, even our present situation. I think a lot of people may read this book, and at this juncture, wonder about our future state of affairs. In fact though, isn’t this what we see out of corporations like Nike and Coke? Workers in South America and Korea might as well be the half android emotionally killed labor commodities.
In Somni, there is a division between the naturally born, and the created units of labor. Also a myth that the andoid folks have no feelings. How do you think Neville Isdell or Mark Parker feal about plant workers in South America, India, or China? Places today where workers are killed for speaking up about their hazardous drone quality lives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRbtdvtke3w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgl7vDZ-jF8
This chapter represents wonderful social commentary for me, not just a futurisitc and telling device, but as a current social catalyst. I’m not particularly saying this book is A Brave New World but surely there is as much socio-political motivation in the book as there is for the form of the novel. The waitress we get an interview from might as well work at a McDonalds, we get her account of how disastrously the corporate world has dealt with its workers. In Alex’s post her mentions this chapter as being insightful of the distant but not so distant future, I believe it is. I also think though that this chapter is relavant from the late nineteenth century on in the field of corporate overtakings. As infantile as they were at the time, the last hundred and some odd years are a drop in the bucket, have drastically changed the quality of life all over the world.
Staying in touch with out novel, I feel we are looking at different forms of colonization (for lack of a better word), through the eyes of various colonizers/colonized. And isn’t the diner a colonizing aparatus? Jameson is right again, the marxist critique is compelled throughout!
I also like the theme of the writer as a strong undercurrent in our novel. The reversion to story telling being the only viable means left for getting information passed is nice too. With this in mind though, I kind of wish this book would have started in Medieval times so that the narrative could have started with a scope and come full circle.
Aside-
I’ll bring a cup of coffee (Or cookie. Hey its your choice!) to anyone who knows the word defined below, without the internet of course.
Noun- an unstimulating, low-wage job with few benefits, esp. in a service industry, little or no chance for advancement.
October 29, 2008 at 10:42 pm |
now that is some sort of post…
October 30, 2008 at 4:15 am |
McJob!? Could it be!?
Did you ever see the movie The Island? Scarlett Johannson and Ewan McGregor. They create clones, hide them underground and perpetuate a fantasy life for them, but they are really high tech insurance policies for the ultra rich (they harvest the clone’s organs and crazy crap like that). Talk about Marxism. I bring it up because it was the first time I remember actually seeing Marxism in contemporary entertainment culture. The first time I saw the film, I thought Ewan and Scarlett were super sexy and that was about it. Then I took Vaneeta’s class and it smacked me in the face a little. Interesting, in the time (even week, I’d argue) when Marxism is experiencing a revival in its demonization, we find it in Cloud Atlas and literary theory. Damn you, David Mitchell.
October 30, 2008 at 10:35 am |
Yes, Melanie, I would have to say someone who works in the fast food industry, although there is room for advancement, you can go from dishwashing to fry cook to cashier. If you really have the gumption you may even be regional manager. One day you can even be Corporate. Maybe, even own your own franchise one day. I know its a dream.
As far as Marxism in this novel. It began in the very first few pages with the colonization of the Maiori by the British protege’s, the Maori.
Brandon,
I am taking Medival Lit on film this semester, I think it would be an interesting way to begin this novel, but there must be a reason why Mitchell begins with 1840′s Chatham Isles as his starting point. Maybe the colonization factor won out over the form of the narrative theme.