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Javier Gomez
Papa Song is the mascot for a futuristic McDonald’s-like restaurant franchise. Although he sounds like a person when Sonmi first describes him, after she “ascends” and becomes more intelligent, Sonmi realizes that Papa Song is just a hologram. The fabricants working in the Papa Song restaurant franchise endure dehumanizing conditions, showing how the government that Sonmi lives in requires slave-like labor to function.
Papa Song Quotes in Cloud Atlas
The Cloud Atlas quotes below are all either spoken by Papa Song or refer to Papa Song. 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
V.A. was unsure of himself for once. “I dreamt of a … nightmarish café, brilliantly lit, but underground, with no way out. I’d been dead a long, long time. The waitresses all had the same face. The food was soap, the only drink was cups of lather. The music in the café was”—he wagged an exhausted finger at the MS—“this.”
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Chapter 5 Quotes
Catechism Three teaches that for servers to keep anything denies Papa Song’s love for us and cheats His Investment. I wondered, did Yoona~939 still observe any Catechism? But misgivings, though grave, were soon lost in the treasures Yoona showed me there: a box of unpaired earrings, beads, tiaras. The xquisite sensation of dressing in pureblood clothes overcame my fear of being discovered. Greatest of all, however, was a book, a picture book.
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Chapter 7 Quotes
The economics of corpocracy. The genomics industry demands huge quantities of liquefied biomatter, for wombtanks, but most of all, for Soap. What cheaper way to supply this protein than by recycling fabricants who have reached the end of their working lives? Additionally, leftover “reclaimed proteins” are used to produce Papa Song food products, eaten by consumers in the corp’s dineries all over Nea So Copros. It is a perfect food cycle.
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Papa Song Character Timeline in Cloud Atlas
The timeline below shows where the character Papa Song appears in Cloud Atlas. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5
...Sonmi is a “fabricant” who works at a restaurant seemingly owned by a man named Papa Song . Fabricants (human clones) don’t get breaks and rarely wonder about the outside world. Once...
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...of the word “secret.” The concept is unfamiliar to Sonmi, who is used to having Papa Song know everything she knows. Yoona takes Sonmi to the office of Seer Rhee, who is...
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According to Papa Song ’s Catechism, replicants may not keep anything for themselves, since doing so would cheat Papa...
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...of their memories about Yoona’s body still intact. That year, instead of a Starring Ceremony, Papa Song gives an Anti-Union Sermon.
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At the sermon, Papa Song tells of terrorists called Union who must have infected Yoona. This event damaged the trust...
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...back to her old restaurant. Cautiously, they descend on the elevator to enter the restaurant. Papa Song stands on a platform near the entrance, and Sonmi suddenly realizes he’s just a hologram....
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Overall, Sonmi finds her return to Papa Song ’s anticlimactic. She determines she used to be a “slave” at the restaurant, and at...
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Chapter 7
...own if she wants to keep going. Apis disconnects, and Hae-Joo says they’re going to Papa Song ’s Golden Ark, which Sonmi recognizes as the place fabricants go to be exulted after...
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...turnstiles, including Sonmis, Yoonas, and other models that Sonmi recognizes. They sing the psalm of Papa Song as they prepare to be “exulted” and taken to Hawaii. But when Hae-Joo and Sonmi...
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...fabricants have rights, and Sonmi herself saw fabricants in an ark headed toward Hawaii at Papa Song ’s, but Sonmi says those images are computer-generated. The Archivist doesn’t back down but suggests...
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...feels that this event, like the other events she’s confessed to the Archivist, beginning at Papa Song ’s, was scripted and that all the major people in her story like Hae-Joo and...
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