marco
Ghostwriter
Posts: 4 
|
Post by marco on Oct 2, 2015 11:13:52 GMT
I've just finished reading Cloud Atlas, and I noticed that one of the characters, Timothy Cavendish, didn't fit with the others. At one point he says "I, too, have a birthmark, below my left armpit, but no lover ever compared it to a comet." So Timothy Cavendish doesn't have the same birthmark as the other characters from Cloud Atlas! However, in Ghostwritten, in the London chapter, we hear about Katy Forbes "She'd had a birthmark shaped like a comet." Those two stories take place at around the same time, and Timothy Cavendish is even in the same chapter as Katy Forbes in Ghostwriten. Could it be that Katy Forbes should actually have taken Timothy Cavendish's place in the Cloud Atlas story, but for some reason things didn't go as they were supposed to and Timothy ended up playing the role that Kate should have played? Thoughts please!  |
|
|
|
Post by likefireworks on Oct 26, 2015 17:07:00 GMT
That's a really interesting idea, I guess if you take it from the canon point of view, then it could relate to deeper, mystical connections that the travellers in Mitchell's books have. However, there is a case for saying that what DM was doing was I likeing with your head a little bit - looking for patterns or reasons everywhere, even when they're not present. I mean, if you really want to take a sceptic's view, then one could argue that all these coincidences between characters are just that - coincidences. Cloud Atlas could be interpreted actually as a reflective narrative in terms of the fundamental human nature to look for meaning and patterns, no matter how unlikely or defying of the laws of physics they could be.
|
|
|
|
Post by frobisher on Oct 31, 2015 8:43:20 GMT
I think it implies that Katy is simply another reincarnation of the Cloud Atlas Soul, we know the same soul can exist at the same time because Cavendish would have been alive during the 70s, and been young while Rey did her thing.
(Unless Rey never truly existed, due to being in a novel.)
|
|
