The Will to Power as a Determinant for the Future of Mankind: David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas” (Part 1)

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004) sets out to achieve two noble goals: to engage the reader in a discourse about human nature and historical continuity, and to entice him to reflect on his relation to the past, the present, and the future. This is no small feat for the Ghostwritten author, and for the reader it is both an incredible intellectual challenge and an irresistible invitation to view life from a perspective not altogether conventional.

The new reader is instantly struck by the technically intricate structure of the work: six interlocking storylines, with five of them divided down the middle, separated halfway through the book by a “mirror” – the sixth story inventively entitled “Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After.” The novel begins with the Mutiny on the Bounty-inspired “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing,” proceeds at a breakneck pace to “Letters from Zedelghem” to “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery” to “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish,” and ends with the dystopian future of “An Orison of Sonmi~451.” By the time the reader reaches the “mirror” at the core of the novel, he will have traversed several continents, journeyed through several centuries, and grappled with several disparate genres – from history to crime thriller to farce to sci-fi. The second half of the novel will bring the reader full circle, answering (some of) the questions raised in the first half. This is Mitchell’s intention, obviously – to give the reader a panoramic scope of humanity.  But the question is WHY? Why is there a need for the reader to realise he is right at the centre of that long thread of continuity? The answer lies in Friedrich Nietzsche and his philosophic concept of Der Wille zur Macht, or the will to power.

Nietzsche was hyperbolic in every sense (for a taste of this, read any random part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra); the “doctrine” of the will to power posits that there is an instigator, a “driving force” in human beings that makes them want to reach the highest echelon of ambition, excellence, and power – by any means possible. The notion of the will being every man’s drive to survive in a godless universe belongs to Arthur Schopenhauer, one of Nietzsche’s early influences. Nietzsche appropriated Schopenhauer’s “will,” but rather than adhering to the original idea of the will being applicable to only sentient beings, he expanded it to include all life, i.e., the living cosmos. This had a profound effect on Man’s perception of himself and the universe. If one is to follow Nietzsche’s proclamation closely (but not the way the Nazis did), it can be inferred that there is no greater power in the universe than power. All cosmic matter is subject to this “natural law of physics.”

In our time of blind political correctness, Nietzsche’s view is often (intentionally) misinterpreted as a kind of social Darwinism. [*] This is a gross distortion. The will to power is neither a strictly negative nor an active force; it can be a life-affirming and passive energy, one that assures equilibrium in the universe. One does not have to actively dominate others to exist. The mere act of existing in itself is already a form of resistance (against Chaos), and constitutes the will to power. Likewise, the charitable acts of giving and loving are also the consequences of the will to power, as these acts allow us to thrive in a universe that is openly hostile to our existence. To put it in another way, both acts of kindness and nihilism are born out of the will to power. The trick is to strike a balance between the two, which mankind, as history has shown, has more often than not failed to do.

A nuanced understanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy is crucial to the reading of Cloud Atlas, since Mitchell makes no secret of his fascination with the effect of the will to power on mankind. Nietzsche is explicitly mentioned in “Letters from Zedelghem,” the epistolary 1930s section that has Belgium as its setting and a young English musician as its protagonist. Robert Frobisher finds himself working as an amanuensis to the famed but declining composer Vyvyan Ayrs. Of Ayrs, an admirer of Nietzsche’s philosophy, Frobisher has the following to say:

To men like Ayrs, it occurs to me, this temple is civilization. The masses, slaves, peasants and foot-soldiers exist in the cracks of its flagstones… Not so the great statesmen, scientists, artists and, most of all, the composers of the age, any age, who are civilization’s architects, masons and priests. Ayrs sees our role is to make civilization ever more resplendent. My employer’s profoundest, or only, wish is to create a minaret that inheritors of Progress a thousand years from now will point to and say, ‘Look, there is Vyvyan Ayrs!’ (82)

Frobisher’s assessment of Ayrs comes close to Nietzsche’s theory – that of man’s desire to remain relevant and immortal at all costs. Frobisher himself, however, does not feel the same; to him, writing music is simply a primitive form of survival (which, ironically, is also the will to power). In the second half of the novel, we learn that Ayrs is not averse to plagiarism. But in the end, it is Frobisher who triumphs when he goes on to produce Cloud Atlas Sextet (note the number six), a composition that will ensure him immortality as it is later heard in the section “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery.”

The idea that men (and women) will do anything to secure a tolerable existence is evident from the first section “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” onwards. Adam Ewing, an American notary who had shipwrecked in the Pacific, has to rely on the “kindness” of strangers. He joins Prophetess, a ship steered by an unscrupulous Dutchman and his even more odious crew. Dr Henry Goose manages to persuade him that he suffers from a “brain worm” and needs to be treated. The nature and the repercussions of the treatment are revealed in the concluding section of this storyline. Adam finds out that Dr Goose in fact has a hidden agenda. When his secret is out, he has this to say for his behaviour:

Surgeons are a singular brotherhood, Adam. To us, people aren’t sacred beings crafted in the Almighty’s image, no, people are joints of meat, diseased, leathery meat, yes, but meat ready for the skewer & the spit … ‘Tis absurdly simple, I need money & in your trunk, I am told, is an entire estate, so I have killed you for it … But, Adam, the world is wicked. Maoris prey on Moriori, Whites prey on dark-hued cousins, fleas prey on mice, cats prey on rats, Christians on infidels, first mates on cabin boys, Death on the Living. “The weak are meat, the strong do eat.” (524) 

The idea verbalised here is one of “the survival of the fittest” (a misinterpretation of Nietzsche) and of extreme cynicism. Dr Goose’s view of the world has already previously been made clear to the reader when he says “our rapacity – for treasure, gold, spices & dominion … is the keenest, the hungriest, the most unscrupulous,” adding that this “rapacity” is also what “powers our Progress” (508). It is no coincidence that his language echoes Robert Frobisher’s descriptions of the similarly characterised Ayrs.   

To a lesser extent, the reader is also confronted with the human “rapacity” for money and domination in “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish,” perhaps the most comical section in the entire novel. Here we are introduced to Timothy Cavendish, a publisher living in 21^st-century England pursued by gangsters for financial reasons and subsequently locked up against his will in a nursing home. In Cavendish’s case, it is ageing which is his enemy, and the fact that the society he finds himself in is more than willing to dispense with the aged to make room for the young. In an ultra-pessimistic speech about growing old, he laments:

Behold your future, Cavendish the Younger. You will not apply for membership, but the tribe of the elderly will claim you. Your present will not keep pace with the world’s. This slippage will stretch your skin, sag your skeleton, erode your hair and memory … On escalators, on trunk roads, in supermarket aisles, the living will overtake you, incessantly. Elegant women will not see you. Store detectives will not see you. Salespeople will not see you, unless they sell stair-lifts or fraudulent insurance policies … So do not fritter away your days. Sooner than you fear, you will stand before a mirror in a care home, look at your body, and think, ET, locked in a ruddy cupboard for a fortnight. (183)

The irreverent tone of the speech does not disguise the loneliness and hideousness of ageing. In a society that has the habit of consigning its aged to oblivion, people like Timothy Cavendish have no future. They have served their role, and are on the verge of utter redundancy, so the powerful (the young and the living) have no choice but to eliminate them.

[*] Nietzsche was not a supporter of Darwinism due to its (pessimistic) assertion that the strong will always triumph. He is of the opinion that the opposite is true, as the weakest usually form the majority. This is stated in Twilight of the Idols (1889).

Mitchell, David. Cloud Atlas. London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd, 2004.

Link to Part 2: http://ed-is-a-stranger-on-earth.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-will-to-power-as-determinant-for_25.html