Character Analysis
Fly Away, Little Birdie
In Cloud Atlas, people with bird names are jerks. Adam Ewing has Dr. Goose. Frobisher mentions a Dr. Egret, "a quack whom I didn't half-suspect of plotting to do me in as expensively as he could contrive" (10.1.2). Luisa has a Fran Peacock, but she's the exception, having the guts to print Luisa's expose. Cavendish tells us of Felix Finch, the literary critic who calls Knuckle Sandwich "four hundred vainglorious pages [that] expire in an ending flat and inane quite beyond belief" (4.1.28). Yikes. That's harsh.
So, Hoggins throws him off a balcony. We're not saying he deserved it, but if you take the reincarnation theme into consideration, perhaps he's paying for the sins of a past life? Like robbing and nearly murdering Adam Ewing in the body of Dr. Henry Goose? Or maybe author David Mitchell has had a few bad experiences with doctors and critics in his day?