When I first began reading David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, I was transported to my days as an undergrad. The University of Iowa offered a class in 16th and 17th century English works written by Swift, Defoe, Johnson, Wordsworth, and many others. During that time, our class also read journals written by ship’s captains, traders, and other world travelers. Because I was transported, I renewed my love affair with the language of that time. Their language was undeniably highbrow, necessitating the use of a dictionary for unfamiliar words that are very different from the ones we use today. For example, this excerpt from Laurence Stern’s A Sentimental Journal; Through France and Italy:
I have something within me which cannot bear the shock of the least indecent insinuation; in the sportability of chit-chat I have often endeavored to conquer it, and with infinite pain have hazarded a thousand things to a dozen of the sex together – the least of which I could not venture to a single one, to gain heaven.
Sterne has just described his amazement and reaction over the remarks from Monsieur le Count. This is the speech of an educated person, trying to describe in great detail what could have been described as: “I was shocked when he asked if I had sex with a French woman. It wasn’t the first time I had this kind of conversation and to tell the truth all of the French women I have been with weren’t that great in bed.”
As I read Cloud Atlas, the changes in language from narrator-to-narrator became quite pronounced. A bit jarring at first. But, over time, I saw how it created character and place. Over the centuries, the English language has built a foundational code through Geek and Latin stems, onomatopoetic words describing actions and things, and anglo-saxon roots. These and many more constructs create the DNA of our language that evolves over time and unequivocally represent each period of writing.
Mitchell’s novel is a series stories, connected like nesting dolls resting within each other through tidbits of commonality. Mitchell develops temporal leaps through his use of language. His use of physical and sentient cues attaches his characters to future worlds. He begins with a journal written by a beleaguered American attorney that is found by a rascal musician and apprentice composer, who mentions finding it in letters to his lover. These letters are passed to a reporter decades later. After the reporter, Mitchell introduces Mr. Cavendish, a publisher on the lamb from underworld thugs. Cavendish is an educated man living in the present decade with a penchant for cussing and slang. The lives of these characters span over a hundred years. These narratives are realistic and indicative of written works during their time. Each speak English, and, as should be expected, a substantial difference in language between each one.
The next story, An Orison of Sonmi ~ 451, is about a clone set free only to be captured and terminated, is an oral history of her life that occurs in the distant future. Mitchell brings the reader into the future with this fifth chapter, because Sonmi – 451 is called a fabricant. Her orison, another word for prayer, takes the shape of a personal account of major historical events that are recorded by an Archivist. She is not talking to a priest or a historian or reporter. The Archivist explains right away that they (no gender specified) ask “prisoners to recall their earliest memories to provide a context for corporatic historians of the future.” (p. 185). The Archivist collects data to be sorted through at a later date by historians. Furthermore, the word corporatic appears and technically means nothing to the reader, yet. To come upon words like fabricant and corporatic makes a sudden break from the present day, slang-rich language coming from the Mr. Cavendish.
Other words appear in the text to denote a change in time. Stimulin is a chemical used to wake fabricants from resting periods. Logoman is a god to the fabricants, who recite catechisms to him every morning. Logoman and corpocratic are indications of purely capitalist society, which the reader is given textual facts of how the government functions as the narrative progresses. This society is very different from today’s, futuristic, one of many possible scenarios if corporations continue with their current growth.
Another interesting detail and fascinating construction of a future language is the exclusion of the letter e from its stem of ex, such as Xultation (p. 186) and xactly (p. 187). Logic seems to have excised the need for a silent letter at the beginning of a word. A good example of this is occurs when writing a series of numbers. The zero before the first number in the sequence is never written (as convention would dictate, but sometimes a zero precedes a series of numbers for PINs and passwords).
Today, there is substantial evidence for the evolution of the English language. These new words, made up words, bear the roots and stems of common words, yet appear to have evolved over time. These constructed language words are not as jarring to the mind, nor as obscure and unrelatable.
Following Sonmi’s orison, the evolution of the English language continues to shape characters, imagery, and settings. In Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After, the reader is sent forward in time to Hawaii, but it is a very different place. Zachary, the narrator, gives an oral history of his people using English, as well as eye dialect and dramatic grammatical changes. It would seem that his speech patterns would put him in the distant past, taking place before the first story. His words are vulgar and guttural. Clearly seen in the title of this story, everything reads like dialog, heavy in slang, which is called eye dialect. The name, eye dialect, is a form of writing for the eyes, as opposed to writing for the ear. The spelling and grammar work together to show how a character’s speech is vulgar. The reader is given enough words and textual clues to discern what is being said, but is not sure exactly what it means until Meronym appears, a person from the cultured and educated future. She uses grammar and syntax. She also speaks in Zachary’s language, showing how Zachary’s people live an uneducated and primitive life in the future. Having a dramatic change in language at this point in the novel indicates a dramatic change in time. Through textual evidence, the reader is led to believe that this story takes place hundreds of years beyond Sonmi – 451’s time.
In a NBC News article written in 2014, an expert linguist had some issues with Mitchell’s evolution of language. The linguist pointed out some more logical and fact-based assessments, providing the world went through these fictional changes. Mitchell may have failed to take certain linguistic issues into consideration, but his work remains authentic. To write about a future world takes speculation and risks. I believe many writers forget the nuance of using eye dialect to portray characters. They also fail to take risks with creating new words. Because of these simple word choices, their stories lose depth and authenticity. Mitchell’s choices in language for each of the stories told in Cloud Atlas have the veracity and authenticity of character. That’s exactly what we as readers demand is to be transported into character and setting. We want to take part in the events—feel them happening—and Cloud Atlas performs brilliantly.
#howtoforwriters
Michael Leo Premo 
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