A Game with Shifting Stories: Borges as a Hermeneutic Lens on Mitchell's Cloud Atlas

This article presents a reading of Cloud Atlas using Borges' oeuvre as a hermeneutic lens. Using clues found within the novel, we are led to Borges' short stories and essays, which in turn become keys that open alternate routes of signification. The analysis is an interpretative journey of references and allusions through a chain of interconnected elements that bind together Borges' texts and Mitchell's novel, triggered by an inconspicuous reference in one of its narratives; a concatenation that constitutes a dialogue between both authors that provides a deeper understanding of each other's work. The resolution of this process is the execution of the incomplete argument presented by the narrator in "Tema del traidor y del heroe" through Sonmi's experience in the section "An Orison of Sonmi-451."