Sonmi: Deified in Death

Korean Peninsula

(Image from Wikipedia)

By now, regular readers know that the county called Nea So Copros in David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas is modeled on a unified Korea, but this is made explicit only in the story that follows "An Orison of Sonmi-451," a tale entitled "Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After," which relates the story of a certain Zachry who lives on an island of Ha-Why (Hawaii) in a post-apocalyptic, barbaric future and worships the goddess Sonmi, even after he learns the truth of her humanity through asking a more civilized visitor known as Meronym about the three-dimensional image of a beautiful woman that she has in her possession:

She was Sonmi, Zachry. Sonmi the freakbirthed human what your ancestors b'liefed was your god.

Meronym then further explains:

She was borned'n'died hun'erds o' years ago 'cross the ocean west-nor'westly . . . on a pen'sula all deadlanded now but its old-time name was Nea So Copros an' its ancient one Korea. A short'n'judased life Sonmi had, an' only after she'd died did she find say-so over purebloods'n'freakbirths' thinkin's.

These two quotes come from page 277, and anyone who's stayed with me thus far, since that beginning quote from page 3 in my reading of Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, will observe that this novel covers a lot of territory and time, literally a world-historical text.

But more reports another time, for today's the date of an annual medical check-up for me.