Cat's Cradle | |
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First edition hardback cover |
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Author(s) | Kurt Vonnegut |
Original title | Cat's Cradle |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | Satire / Science Fiction |
Publisher | Holt, Rinehart and Winston |
Publication date | 1963 |
Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
Pages | 304 |
ISBN | ISBN 0-385-33348-X |
OCLC Number | 40067116 |
Preceded by | The Sirens of Titan |
Followed by | God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater |
Cat's Cradle is the fourth novel by American writer Kurt Vonnegut, first published in 1963. It explores issues of science, technology, and religion, satirizing the arms race and many other targets along the way. After turning down his original thesis, in 1971 the University of Chicago awarded Vonnegut his Master's degree in anthropology for Cat's Cradle.[1][2]
The title of the book derives from the string game "cat's cradle." Early in the book it is learned that Felix Hoenikker (a fictional co-inventor of the atom bomb) was playing cat's cradle when the bomb was dropped, and the game is later referenced by his son, Newton Hoenikker.
Contents |
After World War II, Kurt Vonnegut worked in the public relations department for the General Electric research company. GE hired scientists and let them do pure research, and his job was to interview these scientists and find good stories about their research. Vonnegut felt that the older scientists were indifferent about the ways their discoveries might be used. The Nobel Prize-winning chemist Irving Langmuir, who worked with Vonnegut's older brother Bernard at GE, became the model for Dr. Felix Hoenikker. Vonnegut said in an interview with The Nation that "Langmuir was absolutely indifferent to the uses that might be made of the truths he dug out of the rock and handed out to whoever was around, but any truth he found was beautiful in its own right, and he didn’t give a damn who got it next."[3]
At the opening of the book, the narrator, an everyman named John (a.k.a. Jonah), describes a time when he was planning to write a book about what important Americans did on the day Hiroshima was bombed. While researching this topic, John becomes involved with the children of Felix Hoenikker, a fictional Nobel laureate physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb. John travels to Ilium, New York, to interview the Hoenikker children and others for his book. In Ilium John meets, among others, Dr. Asa Breed, who was the supervisor "on paper" of Felix Hoenikker. As the novel progresses, John learns of a substance called ice-nine, created by the late Hoenikker and now secretly in the possession of his children. Ice-nine is an alternative structure of water that is solid at room temperature. When a crystal of ice-nine contacts liquid water, it becomes a seed crystal that makes the molecules of liquid water arrange themselves into the solid form, ice-nine.
John and the Hoenikker children eventually end up on the fictional Caribbean island of San Lorenzo, one of the poorest countries on Earth, where the people speak a barely comprehensible creole of English (for example "twinkle, twinkle, little star" is rendered "Tsvent-kiul, tsvent-kiul, lett-pool store"). It is ruled by the fictional dictator, "Papa" Monzano, who threatens all opposition with impalement on a giant hook.
San Lorenzo has an unusual culture and history, which John learns about while studying a guidebook lent to him by the newly-appointed US ambassador to the country. He learns about an influential religious movement in San Lorenzo, called Bokononism, a strange, postmodern faith that combines irreverent, nihilistic, and cynical observations about life and God's will with odd, but peaceful rituals (for instance, the supreme act of worship is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the bare soles of the feet of two persons, supposed to result in peace and joy between the two communicants). Though everyone on the island seems to know much about Bokononism and its founder, Bokonon, the present government calls itself Christian and those caught practising Bokononism are punished with death by the giant hook.
As the story progresses, it becomes clear that San Lorenzon society is more bizarre and cryptic than originally revealed. In observing the interconnected lives of some of the island's most influential residents, John learns that Bokonon himself was at one point a de facto ruler of the island, along with a US Marine deserter. The two men created Bokononism as part of a utopian project to control the population. The ban was an attempt to give the religion a sense of forbidden glamour, and it is found that almost all of the residents of San Lorenzo, including the dictator, practice the faith, and executions are rare.
At the time John arrives, the dictator is badly ailing, however, and states his intention to make Franklin Hoenikker his successor. Feeling guilty and afraid of the offer, the latter abruptly hands the presidency to John, who grudgingly accepts.
The dictator later uses ice-nine to commit suicide as he lies dying from inoperable cancer. Consistent with the properties of ice-nine, the dictator's corpse instantly turns into solid ice at room temperature.
During John's inauguration festivities, in which the American ambassador to San Lorenzo was going to speak, San Lorenzo's small air force was supposed to present a brief air show. One of the airplanes crashes into the dictator's seaside palace and causes his still-frozen body to tumble into the ocean, and all the water in the world's seas, rivers, and groundwater turns into ice-nine, killing almost all life in a few days.
John manages to escape with his wife, a native San Lorenzan named Mona. They later discover a mass grave where all the surviving San Lorenzans had killed themselves with ice-nine, on the facetious advice of Bokonon. Displaying a mix of grief and resigned amusement, Mona kills herself as well. John takes refuge with a few other survivors (an American couple he had met on the plane to San Lorenzo and Felix Hoenikker's two sons), and lives in a cave for several months, during which time he writes a memoir revealed to be the novel itself. The book ends by his meeting a weary Bokonon, who is contemplating what the last words of The Books of Bokonon should be. John receives inspiration from these words and the reader realizes he is planning to place his own book—a "history of human stupidity"—on Mt. McCabe (the highest point on the island) as a "magnificent symbol" and then die.
Republic of San Lorenzo |
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Anthem San Lorenzan National Anthem |
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General location of San Lorenzo |
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Source | Cat's Cradle | ||
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Creator | Kurt Vonnegut | ||
Genre | Satire | ||
Capital | Bolivar | ||
Language(s) | San Lorenzan dialect | ||
Government | Dictatorship | ||
- President | "Papa" Monzano | ||
Currency | Corporal |
The Republic of San Lorenzo is a fictional country where much of the book's second half takes place.
San Lorenzo is a tiny, rocky island nation located in the Caribbean Sea, positioned in the relative vicinity of Puerto Rico. San Lorenzo has only one city, its seaside capital of Bolivar. The country's form of government is a dictatorship, under the rule of ailing president "Papa" Monzano, who is a staunch ally of the United States and a fierce opponent of communism. No legislature exists. The infrastructure of San Lorenzo is described as being dilapidated, consisting of worn buildings, dirt roads, an impoverished populace, and having only one automobile taxi running in the entire country.
The language of San Lorenzo is a fictitious English-based creole language that is referred to as "the San Lorenzan dialect." The San Lorenzan national anthem is based on the tune of Home on the Range. Its flag consists of a U.S. Marine Corps corporal's stripes on a blue field (presumably the flag was updated, since in the 1920s Marine Corps rank insignia did not include crossed rifles). Its currency is named corporals, at a rate of two corporals for every United States dollar; both the flag and the monetary unit are named after U.S. Marine Corporal Earl McCabe, who deserted his company while stationed at Port-au-Prince during the American occupation in 1922, and in transit to Miami, was shipwrecked on San Lorenzo. McCabe, along with accomplice Lionel Boyd Johnson from Tobago, would together throw out the island's governing sugar company, and after a period of anarchy, proclaimed a republic.
San Lorenzo also has its own native religion, Bokononism, a religion based on enjoying life through its untruths. Bokononism, founded by McCabe's accomplice Boyd Johnson (pronounced "Bokonon" in San Lorenzan dialect), however, is outlawed - an idea Bokonon himself conceived for the purpose of spreading the religion and making the residents of the island happier. Bokononists are liable to be punished by being impaled on a hook, but Bokononism privately remains the dominant religion of nearly everyone on the island, including the leaders who outlaw it.
Officially, San Lorenzo is a Christian nation. However, both Catholicism and Protestantism are illegal. This leads to a rather haphazard issuing of last rites.
The religion of the people of San Lorenzo, called Bokononism, encompasses concepts unique to the novel, with San Lorenzan names such as:
Theodore Sturgeon praised Cat's Cradle, describing its storyline as "appalling, hilarious, shocking, and infuriating," and concluded that "this is an annoying book and you must read it. And you better take it lightly, because if you don't you'll go off weeping and shoot yourself."[7] The New York Post stated in an editorial that Cat's Cradle was no more or less than the best novel by an American writer published in the 20th century. Politicians used Vonnegut's writing in Cat's Cradle as an example of the dangerous nature of science, which was then used to make a case against science classes in public schools. Vonnegut rejected these uses of his text by saying "If there is any real point in my writing it must be that humans are far too ignorant of science. Any argument otherwise is just a more vivid illustration of this fact."
Cat's Cradle was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1964.