Text Analysis of Cloud Atlas

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original contract, signed away all rights to the book, but the two nephews are not inclined to accept that fact. They give Cavendish one day to come up with their "share" of the book royalties. Cavendish is desperate. He doesn’t have the money to give them, even if he wanted to. After he has paid his bills and indulged himself a little, there isn’t any money left. He’s also "tapped out" at the bank. As a last resort, he visits his brother, Denholme, in hopes of borrowing the money. He, does, however, offer him a "place who owes him a favor," where Cavendish can lie low for a while.

2. Authorial style

2.1 Stream of consciousness

In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts to depicts the multitudinous thoughts and feelings that pass through the mind with no apparent logic. To create the effect of the chaotic stream that we recognize in reality, the writer presents the seemingly random mingling of thoughts, feelings, and sense impressions of a character at a specific time. The style is used in chapter 4 frequently, for example:

Who cared? The money pot bubbled away—no, it boiled over and set the entire ruddy kitchen alight. Cavendish Publishing—Mrs. Latham and I, that is—didn’t know what had hit us.

Cherry-knockers? The wind?

Next thing I knew, the door flew in off its ruddy hinges! I was thinking al-Qaeda; I was thinking ball lightning, but no. Down the hallway tramped what seemed like an entire rugby team, though my intruders numbered only three. (You’ll notice, I am always attacked in threes.)

Oh, I miss the days when they’d laugh like a hyena, tell you to go to hell and hang up. I traced Magellan’s voyage across my globe and longed for a century when a fresh beginning was no further than the next clipper out of Deptford. My pride already in tatters, I gave Madame X a bell.

Although the sentences were broke into fragments and were out of linguistic logic, but we can still make up the thoughts of Cavendish by psychological association. In the first example above, It is no doubt that Cavendish is thinking fast and clear about his career and author use those dash marks to approve it. Similar to it, the author’s style of stream of consciousness was also embodied thoroughly in the second example by using long and short sentences at the same time, and by mentioning the thing that seemed totally irrelevant to the story (al-Qaeda, ball lightning and rugby team) to show that Cavendish’s almost incoherent with fear and nervous. In the third example, our poor Cavendish was refused by almost everyone he trusted and began to sink into despair, thinking and doing something irrelevant to numb his pain.

2.2 Dialogic & monologic

A “dialogic” form novel permits the articulation of multiple perspectives and worldviews. Monologue is a long speech by one actor in a play or movie, or as part of a theatrical or broadcast program. In literature, monologue can be expressed out in either first-person or third-person narration. Dialogues are almost everywhere in the second half of the passage, mix with monologues, along form a critical style of this passage. For example:

Eddie: `Men of your age don’t bounce. They splat.’

I fought with all my might, but my sphincter was no longer my own and a cannonade fired off. Amusement or condescension I could have borne, but my tormentors’ pity signified my abject defeat. The toilet chain was pulled.

`Three o’clock.’ Cavendish-Redux went down the pan. Out trooped the thugs, over my prostrate door. Eddie turned for a last word. ’Dermot did a nice little paragraph in his book. On loan defaulters.’

The monologues in the paragraphs above are very detailed and realistic. They show the inner world of Cavendish when he’s being extorted and our readers can easily imagine ourselves in that condition and truly feel his feelings. In a word, the dialogues and the monologues mix together, as if a vivid drama is just played out in front of the readers.

2.3 Verb style

We could totally comprehend the writing technique of the narrator from verb style. The simplified diction style can be reader-friendly, from which us readers can easily understand the plot of the novel because the describing style is much close to our daily life. It’s quite easy to find out that the colloquial or spoken verbs or mono-syllable verbs are frequently chosen to create the internal rhymes in terms of the structure deviation. The verbs are meatiest in chapter 4, for example:

The pieces fell into place. I fell into pieces.

Hot ash burnt my thigh, and I lost track of which face uttered what.

My intestines bubbled, toiled and troubled.

I retired to my office, poured myself a whisky and slooshed down my dicky-ticker pills before tracing Captain Cook’s last voyage on my antique globe.

We can imagine without any difficulty about the situation when Cavendish is extremely fear and in pain facing those shameless scoundrels and when he’s deeply desperate because of Mrs. Latham’s rejection from these verbs. That is the typical example of simplified diction style. The author makes his writing more vivid, direct, and clear by using strong verbs rather than nouns. It can be a good choice to make the novel more readable. The narrative technique of simplicity in diction just goes with plenty of insightful imagination, which may sometime be based on the daily life, and depth-in implication, making us think over the subtext of the passage while reading the novel thus adding interests.

3. Tone

Tone is the reflection of a writer’s attitude (especially towards his readers), manner, mood and moral outlook in his work; even, perhaps, the way his personality pervades the work. The most two obvious tones in chapter 4 are friendly and humorous.

3.1 Friendly

The tone in chapter 4 is direct, reader-focused and friendly, just like Cavendish stand in front of us telling his story. For example:

It shifted ninety thousand, yes, ninety thousand copies in four months, and yes, I am still talking hardcover.

I, yes, I, had exclusive rights to this platinum goose with a bad case of the trots!

Well, I thought, why not sell publications instead of publication?

When reading the