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The comet-shaped birthmark that several characters share represents all that connects humans across time and space. Many comets, like the famous Hailey’s Comet, follow an elliptical orbit and travel past Earth at regular intervals. Similarly, the comet-birthmark characters seem to be reincarnations of one another, where each new character is like a comet passing by Earth. Notably, the comet-birthmark characters do not all have the same personality—Luisa Rey is a journalist willing to put her own life at risk, whereas Robert Frobisher is selfish and mostly just cares about securing his own wealth and reputation. But the characters do have a few things in common. All the comet-birthmark characters practice some form of writing (Robert is a composer, Luisa is a journalist, Timothy Cavendish is a publisher and memoirist, Sonmi~451 is a manifesto-writer, and Meronym is an anthropologist). Similarly, these characters struggle to overcome the greed of the other characters around them, with the greed often leading to violence. While on a literal level the comet suggests that the novel takes place in a universe with a Buddhism-derived type of reincarnation, on a metaphorical level it also suggests that the struggles of past humans are not so different from the struggles of present and future humans, even if these struggles take different shapes.
The Comet Birthmark Quotes in Cloud Atlas
The Cloud Atlas quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Comet Birthmark . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 2
Quotes
She plays with that birthmark in the hollow of my shoulder, the one you said resembles a comet—can’t abide the woman dabbling with my skin.
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Chapter 3
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Robert Frobisher mentions a comet-shaped birthmark between his shoulder blade and collarbone.
I just don’t believe in this crap. I just don’t believe it. I don’t.
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Chapter 5
Quotes
Truth is singular. Its “versions” are mistruths.
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Chapter 6
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Zachry my old pa was a wyrd buggah, I won’t naysay it now he’s died. Oh, most o’ Pa’s yarnin’s was jus’ musey duck fartin’ an’ in his loonsome old age he even b’liefed Meronym the Prescient was his presh b’loved Sonmi, yay, he ’sisted it, he said he knowed it all by birthmarks an’ comets’n’all.
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Chapter 10
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Spent the fortnight gone in the music room, reworking my year’s fragments into a “sextet for overlapping soloists”: piano, clarinet, ‘cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor: in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan’t know until it’s finished, and by then it’ll be too late, but it’s the first thing I think of when I wake, and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep.
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Time cannot permeate this sabbatical. We do not stay dead long. Once my Luger lets me go, my birth, next time around, will be upon me in a heartbeat. Thirteen years from now we’ll meet again at Gresham, ten years later I’ll be back in this same room, holding this same gun, composing this same letter, my resolution as perfect as my many-headed sextet. Such elegant certainties comfort me at this quiet hour.
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Get the entire Cloud Atlas LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Comet Birthmark Symbol Timeline in Cloud Atlas
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Comet Birthmark appears in Cloud Atlas. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2
...women he’s been with. She’s fascinated by the birthmark on Robert, which looks like a comet. She even tells Robert she loves him. He tells her he’s never loved anyone but...
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Chapter 3
...doesn’t notice. She rereads Robert’s letters to Rufus and is surprised when Robert references a comet-shaped birthmark. Luisa’s super tries to tell her that someone went up to her apartment already,...
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...where she sees she has a birthmark on her shoulder that looks just like a comet, in the same location where Robert described his.
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Chapter 5
...puzzled to see that Sonmi has a birthmark near her shoulder that looks like a comet, since fabricants don’t usually have birthmarks. Sonmi has known for a while that she’s different—in...
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Chapter 6
...has a birthmark that looks like a hand with six streaks coming off it (a comet).
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...that his Pa, Zachry, was weird. Zachry believed Meronym was Sonmi herself because of the comet birthmark. Zachry’s son isn’t sure how much of his father’s old stories about the Kona...
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Chapter 7
...to haunt her. At the flophouse, Sonmi and Hae-Joo have sex. Afterward, Hae-Joo examines Sonmi’s comet birthmark. In the morning, Sonmi deicides they must destroy all the slaughterships. Consumers need to...
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Chapter 9
...the Starfish sits just a little past the Prophetess. Now, as Luisa approaches it, her comet birthmark seems to throb. She and Napier break into the Starfish and find a draft...
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