I’m not sure what to think about the end of Cloud Atlas. All I know is that I was getting to the point with the novel that by the end I was just trying to read faster to be done with it. Can you appreciate something without having to really enjoy it? I mean, I appreciate the novel, what it does and what it works to do…but it was just okay for me. Not so much to say it was a disappointment, but it never “climaxed” like Myra did. Why? Well, that’s what I’m trying to sit here and consider. Like Karen said in her blog, the six different narratives created kind of disjointed feel for me. Though they were all somehow connected, the time periods, plots and styles in which some of them were written didn’t directly appeal to me. The two stories that I enjoyed most were Luisa and Sonmi’s, (as I’ve said before) but I just realized that both of them have a female narrator. Could it be perhaps that I identifed with those characters more? I could appreciate their positions and struggles and sympathized with what they were trying to accomplish.
Thinking about the text as a whole, I like some of the ideas that were brought out in class about the colonizer and the colonized, the oppressed and the oppressor, the self-serving and the selfless–good and evil if you will-human nature. Mitchell’s aim to get us to consider “the Other” is more subtle to me in some sections that others. I didn’t even pick up on the elderly in the Cavendish story at first. And I feel like this is one of those books that a second read through would be really beneficial for. There are probably so many connections and foreshadowing between novellas that you may miss on a first read. I don’t think I have the time or the will power to read this again (at least not any time soon) but I’m sure that if I did, I’d be sitting there with the book going “Ohhhh! I see! Ohhh!! Wow! I get it now!!” Or something like that. As it is, just like each novel before it in this course, this one provoked worthy discussion points and points for consideration. I couldn’t ask for anything more. At this point, I’m just glad to be done with it so I can focus on our monster papers.
I really don’t think there was that much emotional investment going on in this novel, as our readings get split in half, and we only get a portion of these people’s lives. We care about Sethe and Denver, you watch in amazment of Myra, and you kind of want smack every one in 1980′s Boston upside the head… but there is little relation to the characters Mitchell is writing about for me. Emotion in novel writing is not to be underestimated.
I agree that with the six different stories in Cloud Atlas that you don’t really relate or identify with any of the characters. I think that Mitchell wants us to think of the “other” but also the affect of the individual on the whole. Ending the way he did that he wants us to look at our society as a whole through these mini stories about societies.
Tab,
I’d love to read a novel that could compare to the climax in “Myra”…ha, ha…
Anyway, you did say that a second read would help you make the connections. The form of this novel is complex and the fact that you may even give it a second read is wonderful. I mean every time you read “Beloved” you find something new. Isn’t that that the stuff that great novels are made of????