Cloud Atlas Themes

Greed isn't anything new. It's as old as we humans are, it's one of the seven deadly sins, and it's a bad mamma-jamma, at that. Some say that greed is the stuff that all sins are made of. Cloud Atl...

You might think that we were done with slavery after the Civil War. But it really depends on your definition of the word. Slavery isn't just about whips and chains, it's about hard work without fai...

Although this isn't what Jane Austen intended, she was onto something when she paired Prejudice with the deadly sin of Pride. After all, people who are prejudiced against others are usually pridefu...

Power comes in all forms—influence, money, strength, weird alien medallions that summon giant dinosaurs to fight your battles for you. If you work hard enough, you can probably achieve any or all...

Why are we talking about fate? It must be destiny, just like you were destined to read this. As for Free Willy, there's a scene in Cloud Atlas where Adam Ewing watches some whales. Does that count?...

Drive for twenty miles in any direction, and you're bound to encounter more retail chains than parks. Are strip malls the new natural? Cloud Atlas shows us a huge span of time, from all the way bac...

Spin-doctors can make anything seem true. Cloud Atlas is all about how far some people will go for the truth (or at least, what's true for them), whether it be keeping others from the truth, or rev...

What does a religion need to be called a religion, as opposed to a mythology, a cult, or simply a set of beliefs? What separates the ancient Greek pantheon from the top three religions of today (Ch...

Remember that night we were all sitting around playing Apples to Apples and eating miracle fruit so that lemons tasted like sugar? We totally kicked your butt at that game. Wait, what? You remember...

As the median age in the United States increases, we've heard that 40 is the new 30. It used to be that 30 was the new 20. In the Dark Ages, 30 was the new dead. Plague and pestilence didn't exactl...