Extended Essays 2021

differences in each novella through his use of typography. The fifth story, An Orison of Sonmi

~ 451 , is written as an interview transcript. Mitchell writes in a sans-serif font for the

interviewer’s dialogue but in a serif font for Sonmi ~ 451’s replies . In Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’

Ev’rythin’ After , a script font is used . Mitchell uses this as the chapter’s form is a recount told

by Zachary . The script font is used to look like Zachary’s handwriting and the character writes

in disjointed English, making it clear that he is the focalised narrator, as opposed to other

narrators in other chapters. Linking back to the Reader Response Theory, readers play a more

active role in deciphering each story and connecting them to find the deeper meaning of the

text, while the author continues to emphasise the vast differences between the stories being

told. These elements of structure, typography and writing style are used by Mitchell in pastiche,

to help distinguish between the fragmented novellas, making the different focalised narrators

between each chapter very clear. This emphasises how Mitchell is crafting an unreliable

narrator. In terms of historical approaches, there is no single omniscient narrator, each chapter

has a different one, so Mitchell ’s contemporary approaches mean the narrator acts outside the

‘norms’ of the work , making them unreliable.

Furthermore, the postmodern view that ‘an author’s originality was not especially esteemed’ is

something Mitchell honours as a postmodern author. In an interview with The Guardian 38 , he

openly speaks about his use of pastiche in Cloud Atlas . As mentioned, pastiche can also include

the imitation of other texts or genres. Mitchell even provides a list of novels that he drew

inspiration from or imitated in his novel. These include If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (Italo

Calvino), Moby Dick (Herman Melville) and Ridley Walker (Russel Hoban), among others.

Mitchell expressed that ‘ Calvino's book is made of interrupted narratives which are never

returned to – my idea was to write a novel whose narratives would be returned to and completed

38 Guardian Book Club: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell – David Mitchell, 2010

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