The Will to Power as a Determinant for the Future of Mankind: David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas” (Part 2)

The theme of the will to power is perhaps most succinctly expressed in “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery,” a crime thriller situated in 1970’s California involving Luisa Rey, a strong-headed journalist, and her attempt to expose a dodgy nuclear power plant. Seaboard Corporation is in itself a miniature version of the dominance hierarchy witnessed in humankind, where the strong and the crafty dispatch the weak to secure their future. The henchmen of Seaboard Corporation double-cross one another to keep the secret of the power plant safe. One of them, Alberto Grimaldi, ponders on the meaning of power:

“Power.” What do we mean? “The ability to determine another man’s luck” … the will to power. This is the enigma at the core of the various destinies of men. What drives some to accrue power where the majority of their compatriots lose, mishandle, or eschew power? Is it addiction? Wealth? Survival? Natural selection? I propose these are all pretexts and results, not the root cause. The only answer can be, “There is no ‘Why’. This is our nature.” “Who” and “What” run deeper than “Why.”’ (132)

This passage functions as the backbone of the novel, calling the reader’s attention to the inescapability of power. It is inescapable because it is very much an inherent part of being human (“This is our nature”). Everything we do – whether it be acquiring wealth or murdering another fellow human being – stems from our natural propensity for power. The reader therefore gets to witness in this section how corporate mercenaries eradicate one another – in full compliance with the “theory” stated above.

As we leap far, far forward in time, into the dystopian future of “An Orison of Sonmi~451,” we see the same pattern replicated, but on a much larger scale. The world is now a simulacrum of Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New Word, and Asimov’s I, Robot combined, with humans having climbed the evolution ladder a little higher and carved out, for their own convenience, a subservient species known as “fabricants” (clones). These fabricants are utilised for menial labour, such as serving in an underground dinery owned by Papa Song Corp, the political power that controls Nea So Copros (Korea). They are not taught independent thought and are brainwashed through corporation rules called “Catechisms.” They are never allowed outside of Chongmyo Plaza, have limited knowledge of the world, subsist on Soap (which deadens their ability to think and feel), and their own goal in “life” is to accrue twelve stars and be promoted to Xultation (retirement in Hawaii). The reader learns of all this through Somni~451, a rebel fabricant which has “ascended” (awakened) and joined a resistance movement operated by anti-establishment purebloods (humans). In what is to be her last interrogation (she has been apprehended and scheduled to be terminated), she reveals to her interrogator – and hence the reader – Nea So Copros’ abundant skeletons in the closet. Orwellian to its core, this is a nation that is hierarchical to the extreme; fabricants are despised and discriminated against by the purebloods because they are “mirrors held up to purebloods’ consciences; what purebloods see therein sickens them” (231). Among the fabricants, there are different categories (Somnis, Yoonas, Ma-Leu-Das) that vie for domination. As for the Seers (corp men), their goal is to “attain the strata of xec in Papa Song’s Corp” (194). In the second half of this section, we are told about an untermensch slum called Huamdonggil which houses the most dejected of the human race. Here we once again catch a glimpse of the ugly face of human nature:

… Huamdonggil is viewed as a chemical toilet where unwanted human waste disintegrates, discreetly; yet not quite invisibly. Untermensch slums motivate downstrata consumers by showing them what befalls those who fail to spend and work like good citizens. Entrepreneurs take advantage of the legal vacuum to erect ghoulish pleasurezones within the slums, so Huamdonggil pays its way in taxes and bribes to the upstrata. MediCorp open a weekly clinic for dying untermensch to xchange healthy body-parts for euthanizing; OrganiCorp has a lucrative contract with the conurb to send in a daily platoon of immune-genomed fabricants – not unlike disastermen – to mop up the dead before the flies hatch. (332)

The inhabitants of untermensch slums are at the bottom of the food chain and are thus open to maltreatment. They are used as a deterrent to disobedient “downstrata consumers,” taken advantage of by iniquitous business hounds, and exploited by official government organisations. Their existence sustains those above them; they are the meat that the strong do eat, as Dr Goose in ““The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” would put it. This suggests that their existence is instrumental to the smooth operation of Nea So Copros (or any regime resembling it). Without them, the cycle of life would completely break down.

The opportunism we witness in the dystopia of Nea So Corpros can only have one outcome: self-annihilation. Greed paves the way to power, power hungers for more power, and its excess generates warfare – as human history has often proved. We are thus not at all that surprised when we exit “An Orison of Somni~451” half way and land in the midst of a post-apocalyptic world in the “mirror chapter”  that is “Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After.” We encounter Zachry, a primitive tribesman who is recounting an episode from his youth concerning the murder of his father (by another tribe, but for which he feels guilty) and his acquaintance with a mysterious girl named Meronym. Zachry’s world at first appears familiar; even his language comes across as a corrupted form of Cockney. We suspect we have gone back in time, to a bygone era where humans were blood-thirsty savages whose only goal in life was survival. This impression is soon proved wrong, when Meronym tells Zachry that she does not believe in Old Georgie (the tribe’s version of the Devil) and that it was not He who “tripped the Fall” (286). When asked who it was who had brought on the Apocalypse, she answers, “Old’uns tripped their own Fall,” “Old’uns” being the extinct human race. Zachry protests by saying the Old’uns had the “Smart” (intelligence). Meronym says:

Yay, Old’uns’ Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an’ made miracles ord’nary, but it din’t master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o’ humans, yay, a hunger for more … more gear, more food, faster speeds, longer lifes, easier lifes, more power, yay. Now the Hole World is big but it weren’t big ‘nuff for that hunger what made Old’uns’ rip out the sky an’ boil up the seas an’ poison soil with crazed atoms an’ donkey ‘bout with rotted seeds so new plagues was borned an’ babbits was freakbirthed. Fin’ly, bit’ly, then quicksharp, states busted into bar’bric tribes an’ the Civ’lize Days ended, ‘cept for a few folds ‘n’ pockets here ‘n’ there, where its last embers glimmer. (286)

To put it plainly, Meronym asserts that the hunger of humans was the cause of the end of human civilisation. Zachry is incredulous, but the reader knows this is the truth, having borne witness to the worlds and eras preceding it. The ecological message in this passage is loud and clear too. Humans’ unchecked desire to explore, invent, create, and manipulate eventually led to excess, and it was this excess of power that corrupted and polluted the earth, bringing about its premature death.

Meronym and Zachry later debate about the difference between the savage and the civilised. The latter claims the “Civ’lizeds” are better off because they have laws. Meronym disagrees: “The savage sat’fies his need now. He’s hungry, he’ll eat.” To her, the civilised are far more calculated: “Now the Civ’lized got the same needs too, but he sees further. He’ll eat half his food now, yay, but plant half so he won’t go hungry ‘morrow. He’s angry, he’ll stop ‘n’ think why so he won’t get angry next time… His will is his slave an’ if his will say-soes, ‘Don’t!’ he won’t, nay” (318). Zachry wonders if it is “better to be savage’n to be Civ’lized.” Meronym is unequivocal on this point: “List’n, savages an’ Civilizeds ain’t divvied by tribes or b’liefs or mountain ranges nay, ev’ry human is both, yay. Old’uns’d got the Smart o’ gods but the savagery o’ jackals an’ that’s what tripped the Fall” (319). Meronym’s words leave no room for misinterpretation. The savage is very much a part of the civilised man, and even though the civilised man may think himself superior to his less refined ancestors, there is no erasing the savagery in his genetic make-up. This again corresponds with Nietzsche’s (implied) view of human nature: that human civilisation is meant to swallow itself the way a snake swallows its own tail – like the ancient symbol of the Ouroboros, a representation of the cyclical nature of the human psyche (Carl Jung).

“Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After” ends somberly, with Meronym hoping that human nature would one day change, but quickly adding, “But fleas ain’t so easy to rid” (319). This tells the reader that there is little chance for human nature to make itself “beautsome.”

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

Link to Part 3: http://ed-is-a-stranger-on-earth.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-will-to-power-as-determinant-for.html