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CHARACTERS: LETTERS FROM ZEDELGHEM

CHARACTERS: LETTERS FROM ZEDELGHEM

CHÂTEAU ZEDELGHEM,
NEERBEKE,
WEST VLAANDEREN
8-II-2018
Readers,
I am now going to tell you a little bit about the characters in section two of Cloud Atlas. This section is composed of a series of letters written by Robert Frobisher to his lover Rufus Sixsmith. Frobisher is a promising young composer who drops out of  Caius College in Cambridge, and develops a gambling problem after he is disinherited from his father (a well respected ecclesiastical). As a result of his gambling, he falls into debt and out of desperation begins to stay in expensive hotels that he can’t pay for. The first letter in section two begins with his entertaining  account of jumping from a second story window to avoid the hotel manager demanding payment. He soon develops a reputation among all of the nice hotels in Britain and must take to the streets. Frobisher claims that he would “rather jump off the Waterloo bridge and let Old Father Thames humble me.” than ask his father for help and he begins to consider alternative options: I.) beg for money from his rich uncle II.) stay with someone from Caius for the summer III.) visit a turf accountant IV.) spend his remaining savings on a train ticket to Chateau Zedelghem in Bruges and convince the reclusive English composer Vyvyan Ayrs to take him on as an amanuensis. Frobisher decides on option IV.) because he is far too proud to ask anyone for help and a turf accountant would be too risky.
En route to Bruges, Frobisher’s dining-table companion offers him a steady job selling silverware but Frobisher turns up his nose at this, claiming that he would “rather swallow cutlery than ever have to sell the stuff.” This one of many examples where Frobisher is given an opportunity to do honest work but considers himself above it, choosing instead to make a living by exploiting others. When Frobisher arrives in Bruges, he falls asleep on the steps of a windmill and has no means of transportation to the remote village where Ayrs lives. In the end he uses his charisma and considerable talent for manipulation to convince a police officer to lend him a bike. Frobisher  makes the fifteen mile journey through difficult conditions on a bicycle which shows us that he can be determined and hardworking when he wants to be.
Vyvyan Ayrs as it turns out, stopped composing many years ago after contracting syphilis and has no hope or intention of ever returning to it. He is not very fond of strangers and greets Frobisher with a gruff “Who in hell are you?” Frobisher uses his charm once again to convince Ayrs to let him try out for a position that he did not advertise for. Ayrs quickly begins to see himself in the young, ambitious composer. While neither one would ever admit to it, the two men have a lot in common. They are both gifted musicians who are pessimistic, arrogant and often times selfish. They share the the same sarcastic sense of humor and begin to banter back and forth. Ayrs agrees to let Frobisher audition but this does not go well at all because Frobisher’s pride prevents him from learning from others or taking criticism. The fact that he is so sensitive to criticism reveals that his sense of self is actually quite fragile, despite his arrogant facade. In reality, we see that he is deeply unhappy and he briefly considers suicide at one point in the novel.
Robert Frobisher seems deeply wounded by his estrangement from his father even though he never actually says anything of the sort. He is unable to move past his bitterness about his father and it taints his perception of the entire world. He is judgmental of everything from the poor with their “bad teeth, parrot voices, and unfounded optimism.” to the landscape which he describes as “cancerous suburbs, tedious farmland, soiled Sussex. Dover an utter fright staffed by Bolsheviks.” He is brutally honest and is always ready with the perfect insult or witty remark for every situation. While these insults are pretty funny to read in a book, some of them would be extremely hurtful to hear in real life. For example he tells a church organist that his “only hope for salvation is a bullet through the brain.”
Its seems as if the only person, place or thing (aside from music) that Frobisher does not hate is Rufus Sixsmith. He is always able to see Sixsmith’s positive qualities and in one of his letters he says to him that “You groan and shake your head Sixsmith, I know, but you smile too, which is why I love you.” While Frobisher may love Sixsmith, he is still extremely selfish and in all of his letters he asks his lover very few questions about his own life. Frobisher’s letters talk almost exclusively about his own problems, triumphs, opinions, music, schemes and even his affair with Ayrs’ wife Jocasta van Outryve de Crommelynck (I’m not kidding that is actually her real name). It is really unfair of him to talk about his relationship with another man’s wife in such detail to Sixsmith, who genuinely loves him. Frobisher is completely blind to this and for an extremely intelligent man, he misses some pretty obvious and important things.
Robert Frobisher is the center of his own world and this is probably why he is so unfulfilled in life. Frobisher actually reminds me a lot of Macbeth because they both have the same fatal flaw, their own ambition. Frobisher dreams of becoming the greatest composer of his time but he isn’t able to follow through with commitments and is unwilling to do the work that it takes to be become great. He has this unrealistic view of himself and thinks very highly of his own “education, breeding and talent.” Like Macbeth, he is willing to take down anyone in his path to the top, even a friend. Both characters betray someone they are close to out of self-interest.
Frobisher repeatedly betrays his mentor Vyvyan Ayrs throughout this section. What makes this betrayal worse is that Ayrs grows to love and trust Frobisher as if he were his own son. Frobisher even seems to enjoy his company on certain occasions and describes their work together by saying that “he whispers the verses as I recite, as if his voice is leaning on me.” Ayrs begins to depend on Frobisher, teaching him all of his secrets and even giving him generous gifts. Eventually Ayrs begins to suspect that his wife may be cheating on him and directly asks Frobisher if she has made advances on him. Frobisher lies directly to his face and Ayrs trusts him. Frobisher doesn’t give a second thought to betraying his mentor and steals Ayrs’ possessions to make a profit. He shows no remorse for any of this but i suspect that this may begin to change in the coming sections...
Vyvyan Ayrs is clearly no saint but he does not deserve such cruelty from a man to whom he has given so much. At least Ayrs has the capacity to love which is more than I can say for Frobisher. Love requires at least some degree of selflessness and sacrifice which I’m not sure Frobisher is capable of. I think he likes Sixsmith more than anyone else but a lack of hatred is not love. Frobisher has so much potential for good which make his actions even more conflicting and disappointing. I have a love hate relationship with Frobisher because he does so many terrible things yet he is still endearing in his own way.
All of his terrible qualities don’t cancel out his wonderful ones. He is a virtuoso with a beautiful way of seeing and describing the world (when he is not overcome by his own cynicism). I love the way in which he describes his musical dreams. One of these dreams takes place in a crowded china shop and everytime that Frobisher moves, something breaks. Each shattering object sounds like a different instrument and together these objects create a symphony. This is genuinely one of the most beautiful descriptions that I have ever read. The way that he articulates his feelings towards music personally resonated with me: “How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn't, the wolves and blizzards would be at one's throat all the sooner.” Frobisher lives and breathes music. He requires it for survival.


Thanks for reading!


-Maggie



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CHARACTERS & THEME: THE PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ADAM EWING


CHARACTERS & THEME: THE PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ADAM EWING


Friday, 14th November -


Adam Ewing is the narrator during part one of this novel. Ewing is a notary from San Francisco who travels to the Chatham Islands on business. Ewing is generally good natured & often trusting to the point of foolishness,  he is quick to dismisses his doubts about Dr. Henry Goose (which we later learn is a big mistake…) Even when he awakes in the night to find a stowaway hidden in his cabin, Ewing is quick to trust Atua, a Moriori fugitive. I also noticed that Ewing has a very high regard of his own morals & while he usually acts with decency, I think it is very easy to overlook his prejudices. Adam Ewing does not offer much information about his life prior to his Pacific journey but we do know that he has a wife named Tilda & a son named Jackson. It is a little strange how Ewing claims that his family is very important to him yet only mentions them once. His journal entries are otherwise extremely detailed & thorough which makes me wonder about what kind of relationship they had. If I had to leave my family for over a year, I would think about them all of the time. He continually mentions a character who he refers to as “dear Fred” & the only thing we ever learn about him is that “Dr. Goose & dear Fred are of the same cloth.” Ewing's entries are descriptive yet distant & voiceless for a journal entry. This becomes especially apparent when compared to Robert Frobisher’s letters. Yet another odd thing about these entries is the fact that section one ends mid-sentence, as if the most important part of the journal was torn out. I’m not sure what to make of this & I’m wondering if it was stolen for some reason?

Adam Ewing’s closest friend is Dr. Henry Goose, a surgeon to the London nobility. He is the first character with whom our narrator is acquainted. The opening scene of the novel begins on a deserted beach & Goose is seen digging through the sand. The first detail that we are given about Goose is his race, a detail which becomes significant as we continue to read. The second thing we learn is his nationality. Upon meeting the doctor, Ewing remarks that “His nationality was no surprise. If there be any eyrie so desolate, or isle so remote that one may there resort unchallenged by an Englishman, 'tis not down on any map I ever saw.” The narrator originally thinks that Goose is a Bedlamite (total lunatic) as the doctor explains his reasons for digging in the sand. Dr. Goose is searching for the teeth of cannibals who inhabited the beach hundreds of years ago. He is looking for teeth in order to hoodwink an old woman who blackballed him from high society. He describes her as a “scented She-Donkey” & intends to fool her into using “cannibals' gnashers” as dentures. He believes that if he is able to publicly prove this at the Ambassadors Ball, he will win back the respect & admiration of the nobility. This gives us insight into Gooses vengeful nature & the value that he places on his own status. Not many people would travel thousands of miles to did up teeth… Maybe Adam Ewing’s instinct about the doctor was right?

Ewing & Goose are two very different men but they are both a bit pretentious & seem to think very highly of their own morals as I mentioned before. They view their treatment of the poor island “savages” as generous & pity their “uncivilized” ways. Both men have a very specific idea of what “civilized” means & unsurprisingly, anyone who is not a white man, does not make this category. They have much sympathy for the natives but in no way do they view the Moriori as equals. People of other races are tolerated & pitied rather than respected. I understand that this story takes place within the context of a 19th century British colony & that this view of naives is typical but it doesn’t justify their attitude. They both frequent the use of derogatory terms, calling black or biracial people “the jungle breed”, “inbred bovine torpor”, “savage”, “mixed-blood mongrel of a man” &c… They are content to standby & watch injustice (This theme will resurface in big way in section three). As the two men watch a Maori chief whip a Moriori slave, Henry Goose remarks “Come, Adam, a wise man does not step betwixt the beast & his meat.” They do not approve of the treatment of the Moriori by white men & Maori but they are still content be bystanders of oppression. It unsurprising that the white men are not beloved by the natives, given this attitude! They are apparently sickened by the prostitution of native women yet neither man does anything to intervene because they are not directly suffering.
They go to church to clear their guilt & they tell themselves that they are better than many other white men. They do not actively persecute people of other races & in this sense they are “better” but better is not the same thing as good. Adam Ewing is naive in thinking that what the natives need is a healthy dose of religion & white civilization. To Ewing, “the Moriori were but a local variant of most flaxen-skirted, feather-cloaked heathens of those dwindling ‘blind spots’ of the ocean still unschooled by the White Man.” Henry Gooses ideas about race are even more frightening, he tells Adam that “After years of working with missionaries, I am tempted to conclude that their endeavors merely prolong a dying race's agonies for ten or twenty years. The merciful plowman shoots a trusty horse grown too old for service. As philanthropists, might it not be our duty to likewise ameliorate the savages' sufferings by hastening their extinction? Think of your Red Indians, Adam, think on the treaties you Americans abrogate & renege on, time & time & time again. More humane, surely & more honest, just to knock the savages on the head & get it over with?” The two main characters in this section take no accountability for the system that they are a part of & sometimes it takes more than sympathy & good intentions to be a good person.
Religion is another matter that is important to both Ewing & Goose who share many refined, gentlemanlike qualities. They are repulsed by the crude & godless sailors & when Mr. Walker offers Mr. Ewing a prostitute, he remarks that “I was a husband & a father! & that I should rather die than abase my dignity & decency with any of his poxed whores!”(note that he uses the past tense to describe being a husband & father). The two men are drawn together by their shared values, disgust of sailors & world outlook. Their stories are intertwined due to the mysterious “ailment” of Adam Ewing. Dr. Henry Goose diagnoses this “ailment” as a rare tropical parasite called Gusano coco cervello. Ewing contracted the parasite in Batavia & Goose tells him that it will cause a gruesome & painful death if left untreated. Dr. Goose agrees to treat Adam free of charge. Ewing is overcome with emotion at this news, writing that “My doctor is an uncut diamond of the first water. Even as I write these words I am tearful with gratitude.”
I am very interested in the Moriori culture because of their non-violent nature. “Consider this, Mr. D’Arnoq urged us. Two thousand savages (Mr. Evans’s best guess) enshrine “Thou Shalt Not Kill” in word & in deed & frame an oral “Magna Carta” to create a harmony unknown elsewhere for the sixty centuries since Adam first tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. War was as alien a concept to the Moriori as the telescope is to the Pygmy. Peace, not a hiatus betwixt wars but millennia of imperishable peace, rules these far-flung islands. Who can deny Old Rekohu lay closer to More’s Utopia than our States of Progress governed by war-hungry princelings in Versailles & Vienna, Washington & Westminster? Here, & where only, were those elusive phantasms, those noble savages, framed in flesh & blood! (Henry, as we later made our back to the Musket confessed, ‘I could never describe a race of savages too backwards to throw a spear as noble.’ ” You could argue that the Moriori are far more “civilized” than any white man in this regard. The Moriori likely would have continued to live in peace had it not been for white men who claimed their land, killed their seals, introducing invasive species, wiped out their population with disease, & transported hundreds of Maori to Rekohu, where they massacred & enslaved the Moriori people. Even after this series of tragedies, the Moriori remained non-violent, “embracing their enemy.” Sadly, they are exploited for their good nature.
Despite his prejudice, I believe that there is still hope for Adam Ewing. At the end of section one, Adam Ewing begins to take redeeming actions, protecting the secret of the Moriori dendroglyphs & later harboring a Moriori stowaway named Atua (partially to save his own skin). Adam witnessed Atua being whipped by his Maori master at the beginning of the novel & they locked eyes for moment. Despite never actually having met Adam Ewing, Atua believes that they are friends stating “Pain is strong, aye-but friends’ eyes, more strong.” Atua is the only character that I like from section one & I am hoping that the friendship between him & Adam will change the way that Adam thinks about the native islanders.
Atua has a fascinating story, he was raised on Rekohu & he is one of very few Moriori to leave home, becoming an apprentice on a French whaling ship at age ten. He eventually becoming a worldly sailor, traveling the globe & converting to christianity. Atua has had diverse & worldly experiences & he knows just as much if not more about the world than Adam Ewing, even if he sees it from a different perspective. Atua explains to Adam that “everywhere he observed that casual brutality lighter races show the darker.” It was interesting to hear about white men landing at Rekohu from the perspective of Atua’s father, Atua describes the “‘Great Albatross,’ paddling through the morning mists; its vividly plumaged, strangely jointed servants who canoed ashore, facing backwards; of the Albatross servants’ gibberish (a bird language?); of their smoke breathing; of their heinous violation of that tapu forbidding strangers to touch canoes (doing so curses the vessel & renders it as unseaworthy as if an ax had been taken to it); of the pursuant altercation; of those ‘shouting staffs’ whose magical wrath could kill a man across the beach; & of the bright skirt of ocean-blue, cloud-white & blood-red that the servants hoisted aloft a pole before rowing back to the Great Albatross.” Adam learns that the British seemed just as foreign to the islands original inhabitants, as they seem to him.
At twenty years old, Atua returned home for the first time, in hopes of settling down & starting a family but he was not so fortunate. Instead, Atua was taken into slavery like the rest of the Moriori & treated with extreme brutality at the hands of his master, Chief Kupaka. He explains that “Rekohu called me home, so I see her so I know the truth” The search for truth is another common thread throughout the novel that will resurface in every section. Throughout years of relentlessly brutal enslavement Atua makes several escape attempts & one of them is temporarily successful. Atua lived in solitude for several years on the deserted Pitt Isle (revered by Moriori as the birthplace of man) with only the company of birds & the spirits of his ancestors. Atua is intensely determined to escape Kupaka & after white settlers reveal his location, Kupaka discovers that Atua is still alive. This is how Atua came to make his escape on The Prophetess. Adam Ewing begins to develop a true sense of respect for the Moriori slave & his “go down fighting attitude.” He reluctantly attempts protect Atua from the wrath of Mr. Boerhaave & Captain Molyneaux, crafting a very convincing defense for the stowaway. I hope that this relationship between Atua and Adam Ewing will continue to develop as the story progresses.
Thanks for reading!!!
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MAPPING OUT CLOUD ATLAS

Mapping Out Cloud Atlas

Hello readers!

Welcome to my blog, you've come to the right place if you want to hear a high school student’s ponderings and perspectives on Cloud Atlas, a lengthy multi-genre novel by David Mitchell. You’ll probably need an atlas (AND a dictionary) to navigate through this novel but with my help you’ll sail right through the pages. Hehe, see what I did there ;) This novel is best described as a mysterious, brilliantly told story within a story. The Atlas is told using the perfect mixture of plot and description while tackling a number of complex issues. In this post I am going to be discussing the first quarter of the novel.
Say what you want about David Mitchell and his novel... But you cannot deny he’s got style... (Harry Potter reference that probably went over your head). If you haven’t read this book before, it would be very difficult to describe without first explaining the extremely unusual style of this novel. Cloud Atlas is composed of sub-sections rather than chapters and each section has a unique and seemingly unconnected storyline with its own plot and characters (there is some overlap here). So far I have read the first two sections of the novel: “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” and “Letters From Zedelghem.”
“The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” is, as it’s title suggests, a journal. Each “chapter” begins with the date and goes into a DETAILED (I cannot emphasize this enough) account of the day-to-day life of Adam Ewing, a notary from San Francisco who travels to Chatham Islands off the coast of New Zealand on business. We are able to guess that this section of the novel takes place in 1849 or 1850 because Ewing mentions that the California Gold Rush began a little over about a year ago. Much of the language is complicated and unfamiliar because of the time period that it was “written in.” Mrs. LaClair warned me that this section might be a little slow and truer words were never spoken. It took me FOREVER to read this section of the novel because I had to look up half of the words. I am being a little dramatic but seriously it was slow, no matter how beautifully it was written. Every word is perfectly chosen and each sentence is musical to the ear. Mitchell writes in elegant descriptive language that captures all of your senses. A couple of observations that I have made about his writing are that he uses a lot of alliteration and always replaces “and” with the symbol “&.”
“Letters From Zedelghem” takes place in Belgium nearly a hundred years after the journal was written. This story is told from the viewpoint of Robert Frobisher, a bisexual composer with a gambling problem. The style of “Letters From Zedelghem” is about as different from “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” as Robert Frobisher is from Adam Ewing (very different). The most obvious difference is that part two is made up of a series of letters rather than journal entries. Each letter is dripping sarcasm, arrogance and contempt. While this may not seem like a positive thing, it sure is hilarious to read, especially when compared to the somber tone of part one.
It is astounding to me that one man could have authored each of the vastly different stories that make up Cloud Atlas. Even more astounding is the way in which he weaves together historical journal entries, letters, political ideas, thrilling plot and philosophical ideas into a greater collective experience, linking each narrative across space and time. This novel breaks all of the rules in the best way possible. It is so compelling and unique because of the way that each story is told using a remarkably different voice and style. I have just begun reading this book and already I would recommended it. Cloud Atlas is both entertaining and highly thought-provoking, I look forward to discussing it further in my next post about characters.

*Note: In my following posts I will be formatting my thoughts according to the section about which they occur. You may notice a few random headers, “&” symbols or post addresses and this is why.

**I’m not being weird it’s a stylistic choice


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