Metaphor Analysis

Cat’s Cradle

The title of the book comes from the children’s string game called “cat’s cradle” in which string is wound around the fingers and changed into different patterns. It can be played alone or with others.

It was the game Dr. Felix Hoenikker, father of the atom bomb, was playing with his youngest son, Newton, on the day the atomic bomb went off in Hiroshima. The game is a major symbol for evil in the book, for the lies humans construct and then get entangled by. Newt tells Jonah that it is “One of the oldest games there is” (Chpt. 74, p. 165). That is why it is difficult to know how it started or how to undo it. It connects everything in a meaningless complexity. For instance, the string that Felix used to play the game was ironically taken from the manuscript of a novel about the end of the world by a bomb invented by mad scientists. This clearly connects the string game with the atomic bomb and the end of the world. The image suggests that evil is constructed by humans.

Later Newt paints an ugly picture looking like a spider’s web that suggests to the narrator “the sticky nets of human frailty”(Chpt. 74, p. 164). Newt tells him it is a cat’s cradle: “For maybe a hundred thousand years or more, grownups have been waving tangles of string in their children’s faces . . . no wonder kids grow up crazy” (Chpt. 74, p. 165). Newt is outraged by this hypocritical game, because he sees “No damn cat, and no damn cradle” (Chpt. 74, p. 166). Every time another lie is exposed, Newt jokes, “See the cat? See the cradle?” (Chpt. 80, p. 179).

Ice-Nine and Images of Death

Ice-nine is the invention Hoenikker comes up with after the atomic bomb and is even more deadly than the bomb, for it ends life on earth. It is more dangerous, because it is easily carried around in little thermos jugs. Jonah the narrator is a reporter, and he tends to see images that relate to death clustered around the Hoenikkers. Ice-nine like the bomb was invented for the military to use in warfare, and violent military images abound. There are police guarding the Lab where Hoenikker worked. A Marine General gets Felix to work on the ice-nine. Angela’s husband is a military weapons manufacturer. The United States gives warplanes painted with violent cartoons on them as a gift or bribe to San Lorenzo, and one of them accidentally starts the end of the world with a crash. Papa Monzano is a military dictator who wears a shoulder holster, and his home is a medieval castle with torture chambers, and the infamous hook for criminals to hang by out front. A Nazi doctor from Auschwitz attends to Papa in his last illness.

The Breed family makes death their business. Asa runs the Lab that invents weapons, while Marvin Breed makes the tombstones. When Jonah remarks that it’s a small world, Marvin says, “When you put it in a cemetery, it is” (Chpt. 31, p. 64). This is how everyone will end up—dead, and Julian Castle can only laugh when the bubonic plague piles up corpses outside his hospital. Mona similarly laughs at the mass ice-nine suicide when she sees thousands of frozen corpses. Papa’s death by cancer is a morbid scene, with people vying to give him absurd versions of the last rites. The

macabre humor makes the reader aware of the pointless death awaiting humans, speeded up by their own hands.

Animals

Animal imagery is often used by authors to depict less than admirable human behavior. In keeping with Vonnegut’s opinion of human stupidity, he portrays people as mindless or vicious animals. Frank Hoenikker is a “fox-faced, immature young man” out to get what he can by cunning (Chpt. 37, p.80). Papa Monzano is a “gorilla in his late seventies” (Chpt. 37, p. 80), blatantly brutal without apologies. Bolivar is the “barracuda capital of the world” (Chpt. 38, p. 81) where everyone is ribbed to shreds in no time; Angela is “a horse-faced woman with platinum blonde hair” (Chpt.47. p. 101), and the capitalist, H. Lowe Crosby, engages in “barn-yard clownishness” (Chpt. 43, p. 92), thinking he is a civilized American. Jonah thinks that the mountains of San Lorenzo look like “pigs at a trough” (Chpt. 60, p. 132). Dr. Vox Humana’s Christianity is symbolized by a chicken in a hatbox, which he is ready to butcher in a bloody rite. The ant farm and bugs in a jar that Frank likes to observe are extended metaphors for human life. They suggest futility, cruelty, and claustrophobia. Even Jonah’s spiritual group, his karass, is described as “free-form as an amoeba” (Chpt. 2, p. 3), engulfing many lives in its shapeless spread towards total destruction.

Theme Analysis

The Failure of Science

When Dr. Asa Breed delivers the graduation address at Ilium High School, he urges the students to get careers in science because “science was going to discover the basic secret of life someday” (Chpt. 11, p. 24). The narrator asks, “What is the secret of life?”  The bartender replies, “They found out something about protein” (Chpt. 11, p. 25).  Vonnegut exposes through such jokes the narrow focus of science as unequal to the real nature of life. The common hope of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that science would save the world is finally debunked in this satire on the failure of science, represented by the atomic bomb. Scientists discovered the atom only to use it as a weapon to wipe out life.

Newt Hoenikker reports that when the first atom bomb was tested at Almagordo, a scientist turned to Felix Hoenikker and said, “Science has now known sin” (Chpt. 6, p. 17). Hoenikker’s reply “What is sin?” (Chpt. 6, p. 17) is the point that science is largely an amoral body of knowledge that ends up in the hands of the ignorant or greedy.

Scientists are represented primarily by the character of Felix Hoenikker, brilliant in one dimension only. They are irresponsible children playing with fire, as illustrated in the anecdote of Felix considering science as the game of an eight-year-old. His lab is filled with toys that give him ideas for experiments. When he gets bored working on the atom bomb and begins studying turtles, the other scientists take away his turtles and give him things that only have to do with the bomb. He is not in the slightest bit interested in people or the terrible results of his games.

Scientists are highly overrated in the narrator’s opinion. Emily Hoenikker was lured into marriage with Felix thinking he was “a modern holy man” whose “mind was tuned to the biggest music there was, the music of the stars” (Chpt. 34, p. 69). The name of his secretary, Miss Faust, evokes the myth of the legendary figure who felt justified in the human ambition to control nature. Dr. Breed exalts Felix as such a scientist who does “pure research” without regard to its results (Chpt. 22, p. 49). Papa Monzano says “science is the strongest thing there is” (Chpt. 66, p. 146) and Felix is a Nobel prize winner who is called one of the most important men in the history of mankind (Chpt. 27, p.56). He is indeed. He invented “that seed of doom called ice-nine” (Chpt. 24, p. 53).

The Failure of Religion

On the Caribbean island of San Lorenzo, the military base is called, “Fort Jesus.” This comic detail shows in a nutshell what became of the religion of universal love and forgiveness. Christianity doesn’t seem to have made much impression on the human race. It is now allied with the military and with capitalism, as exemplified by the Crosbys, who want to transfer their bicycle plant to a good Christian country with cheap labor. In the 1920s, the Castle Sugar Company exploited the starving natives, and relied on the “butterball priests” (Chpt. 56, p. 124) to minister to their distress. Vonnegut seems not so much to criticize Christ as what humans have done to twist his message, as exemplified in Dr. Vox Humana, who became a minister through an ad in Popular Mechanics for the Western Hemisphere University of the Bible at Little Rock, Arkansas.

Bokononism is introduced as an alternative faith that satirizes religion in general and offers a whimsical substitute that is more reasonable, because it centers on the sacredness of human beings rather than on a demanding otherworldly God (Chpt. 94, p. 211). Bokonon is upfront in admitting his religion is made of lies: “the truth was so terrible, so Bokonon made it his business to provide the people with better and better lies” (Chpt. 78, p. 172). He doesn’t ask people to believe the lies, but to be happy and kind to one another: “Live by the foma [lies] that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy” (frontispiece). For instance, Jonah wants to own Mona’s love exclusively, and she says, “Bokonon tells us it is very wrong not to love everyone exactly the same. What does your religion say?” (Chpt. 93, p.209)

Often the narrator uses Bokonon to comment on the absurdity of the world, governments, for instance: “Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s really going on” (Chpt. 46, p. 101). Bokonon’s humorous sayings mock the failings of human beings, so they won’t take themselves seriously: “[Anyone is a fool] who thinks he sees what God is Doing” (Chpt. 3, p. 5). No one can get too dogmatic because Bokonon keeps adding contradictions to his own scriptures every day (Chpt. 81, p. 183). Even Bokonon fails in the end to come up with a creative explanation for the end of the world and suggests suicide as the only logical solution.

Existential Despair

The narrator admits that his second wife left him because he was too pessimistic, and he hopes the beautiful Mona Monzano can fill his “meaningless life” (Chpt. 40, p.

85). The other characters, who share his sense of the futility of life are Newt Hoenikker, the midget, who paints ugly pictures, and Julian Castle, who looks at Newt’s picture and remarks, “So this is a picture of the meaninglessness of it all! I couldn’t agree more” (Chpt. 76, p. 169).  Julian says, “Man is vile, and man makes nothing worth making, knows nothing worth knowing” (Chpt. 76, p. 169). Julian is the one who laughs at the pile of corpses outside his hospital because he cannot cure the natives of bubonic plague.

Bokonon is also trying to come to terms with existential despair in his religion. He depicts even God as having “cosmic loneliness” and creating creatures out of mud, “so the mud can see what We have done” (Chpt. 118, p. 265). His last rites depict humans who are humbly grateful for having been “some of the mud that got to sit up and look around” for a brief time (Chpt. 99, p. 221). The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon, entitled, “What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Last Million Years?” consists of one word: “Nothing” (Chpt. 110, p. 245).

Yet the narrator stops short of the pessimism of Sherman Krebbs, the poet who destroys Jonah’s apartment in a “nihilistic debauch” (Chpt. 36, p. 77) and advocates nuclear war. Bokonon says that when Man politely asked God the purpose of it all, God said, “I leave it to you to think of one for all this” (Chpt. 118, p. 265). This is basically the existentialist philosophy that life has no inherent meaning but what we invest it with.

Top Ten Quotes

1. “Every question I asked implied that the creators of the atomic bomb had been criminal accessories to murder most foul.” Chpt. 18, p. 39

The narrator, Jonah, is interviewing Dr. Asa Breed of the Research Laboratory of the General Forge and Foundry Company about the origin of the atom bomb. He is a reporter, but he cannot keep his tone neutral as a reporter should.

1. “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.”  Chpt. 18, p. 41

Dr. Breed defends the scientists’ pursuit of pure research in the Lab because knowledge itself of any kind is valuable. Jonah does not agree with him, feeling that moral knowledge must inform the nature of the projects studied and the ends of science.

3. “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God." Chpt. 31, p. 63

This is a saying of Bokonon, the prophet who started his own humanist religion. He implies that people do not always know where they are going. There are cosmic plans for everyone; therefore, when the cab driver takes a detour to the grave marker store, it turns out to be fortuitous for Jonah to go with him.

4. “Busy, busy, busy is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.” Chapt. 32, pp. 65-66

This is one of the famous understatements of Bokonon, repeated whenever Jonah finds damning evidence of human ignorance and depravity. In this case, he reflects on the coincidence that Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite, awards the Nobel Prize to scientists who invented the atom bomb.

1. “I had a Bokononist vision of the unity in every second of all time and all wandering mankind, all wandering womankind, all wandering children.” Chpt. 34, p. 73

Jonah has a vin-dit or mystical experience in the tombstone store when he realizes he was led there to discover a stone angel his grandfather had ordered for a family grave. The whole novel is a journey of discovery to the interconnectedness of the apparent unrelated events of life.

1. “. . . everywhere we went we found Hoosiers in charge of everything.”  Chpt 42, p. 90

Hazel Crosby, the wife of the bicycle manufacturer, is obsessed with being from Indiana and connecting with other people from Indiana, like Jonah. She boasts that in their travels she and her husband found Hoosiers in high places. Bokonon calls identifying with a false group like Hoosiers, “granfalloons.”  People who are spiritually connected for a purpose may be more diverse but are joined in a significant group, a karass, like Jonah and the Hoenikkers.

1. “Americans are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.” Chpt. 44, p. 97

This sentence was written by Claire Minton, the wife of the American Ambassador to San Lorenzo. She got her husband fired as a diplomat for writing this in an article. She was trying to explain that Americans are not always loved abroad in other countries and should not expect to be. They are always looking for a new frontier to conquer.

8. “. . . a really good religion/ is a form of treason.” Chpt. 78, p. 173

Bokonon wrote this to explain his discovery of how to get his religion accepted by the people of San Lorenzo. He has himself and the religion outlawed.

1. “She adored her promiscuity; was angered that I should try to make her feel shame.” Chpt. 93, p. 207

Mona is not ashamed of engaging in boko-maru—foot rubbing to mingle souls—with anyone she sees. Jonah is jealous and wants her to only rub feet with him.

1. “And I flattered myself that I was going to be a firm, just, and kindly ruler, and that my people would prosper.” Chpt. 95, p. 213.

As soon as he is given the job of President of San Lorenzo, Jonah is seduced by the illusion that he alone can right the wrongs of the world once he is in power.

Biography Kurt Vonnegut Jr

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father, Kurt Sr., was an architect. His mother, Edith Sophia Lieber Vonnegut, also gave birth to a daughter, Alice, and another son, Bernard, who became an atmospheric scientist. The Vonneguts lost their wealth in the Great Depression in the 1930s. His father became depressed, and his mother committed suicide in 1944.

At Cornell University, Vonnegut majored in chemistry and biology, then transferred to Carnegie Mellon to study engineering. Vonnegut enlisted in the U.S. Army in World War II. He was taken prisoner by the Germans after the Battle of the Bulge (1944-45) and was present in Dresden during the firebombing of that city by the Allies, a tale he tells in Slaughterhouse-Five, the name of the underground meat locker where he was held prisoner. After the war he studied anthropology at the University of Chicago where his master’s thesis was rejected. He was awarded the Master’s Degree in 1971 by substituting Cat’s Cradle as his thesis.

Vonnegut married his high school girlfriend, Jane Marie Cox in 1945, by whom he had three children. He worked as a newspaper reporter and a teacher before moving to Schenectady, New York, where he was a publicist for the General Electric Corporation. His work interviewing scientists there gave him ideas for Cat’s Cradle. The Vonneguts adopted his sister's three children after her death in 1958. He married his second wife, photographer Jill Krementz, in 1979, whose daughter Lily he adopted.

Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano (1952) criticized corporate culture. Other early novels include The Sirens of Titan (1959), Mother Night (1961), Cat’s Cradle (1963), God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965), and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Vonnegut himself awarded Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five A-pluses out of all his novels. They were the ones that made him famous and have remained his most popular works. Breakfast of Champions (1973), Happy Birthday, Wanda June, a play (1970), Slapstick (1976), Galapagos (1985, Hocus-Pocus, (1990), Fates Worse Than Death (1991), and Timequake (1997) all deal satirically with some aspect of modern life, politics, or the human condition. His last book was a collection of essays, A Man Without a Country (2005). Critics felt he repeated himself in his later writing.

Vonnegut was also a graphic artist who illustrated his own books with pen and ink drawings. He was a celebrity on TV talk shows, made cameos in film adaptations of his novels Mother Night and Breakfast of Champions, and recorded Ice-Nine Ballads with Dave Soldier, adapted from Cat’s Cradle and released in 2009.

The Mark Twain of his time, Vonnegut is considered one of the most influential American novelists of the twentieth century. He blended science fiction and the

absurd with social commentary. He died at the age of 84 on April 11, 2007, in Manhattan, following a fall resulting in brain injuries.