LogFAQs > #927780788

au_gold posted...

Im two hours in and I have no idea what the fuck is happening.

it's easier to understand in the book because the stories are only in two chunks, except "Sloosha's Crossin' an' Everything After" which is in one part

basically the book goes:
The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing -> Letters from Zedelghem -> Luisa Rey Mystery -> Timothy Cavendish -> Orison of Sonmi 451 -> Sloosha's Crossin'

each story stops halfway (Adam Ewing's story literally mid-sentence) and gets found in some form by the protagonist of the next story ("Adam Ewing" is a pacific exploration journal and Robert Frobisher finds it on the bookshelf; "Letters from Zedelghem" is a series of letters that Luisa Rey finds half of; "Luisa Rey" gets found by Timothy Cavendish as a film script in a car; "Timothy Cavendish" is a comedic film that Sonmi 451 watches halfway; and Sonmi's story is a sort of holographically projected video recording). then once Sloosha's Crossin' finishes, they resume and conclude in reverse order. each story finishes with the protagonist finding the remainder of the work that contains the last protagonist and resuming where they left off. Adam Ewing's story finishes off the book.

Robert Frobisher, the main character in the 2nd story, also talks about a piece of music he's composing called the Cloud Atlas Sextet, which has six melodies played on six different insruments that work the same way.

part of the idea is that they're all reincarnations of each other, and they get inspired by reading/watching their past lives. during Adam Ewing's story, his life gets saved by a slave, and soon afterwards he starts a kind of anti-racist social group and writes a dissertation on why slavery is wrong, and that's ultimately the spark that gets carried out through the rest of the book.
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peanut butter and dick