Cat's Cradle is the fourth novel by American writer
Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
, first published in 1963. It explores issues of science, technology, and religion, satirizing the
arms raceThe term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for the best armed forces. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation...
and many other targets along the way. After turning down his original thesis, in 1971 the
University of ChicagoThe University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
awarded Vonnegut his Master's degree in
anthropologyAnthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
for
Cat's Cradle.
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.
Background
After
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Kurt Vonnegut worked in the public relations department for the
General ElectricGeneral Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
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 PrizeThe Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
-winning chemist
Irving LangmuirIrving Langmuir was an American chemist and physicist. His most noted publication was the famous 1919 article "The Arrangement of Electrons in Atoms and Molecules" in which, building on Gilbert N. Lewis's cubical atom theory and Walther Kossel's chemical bonding theory, he outlined his...
, who worked with Vonnegut's older brother
BernardBernard Vonnegut was an American atmospheric scientist credited with discovering that silver iodide could be used effectively in cloud seeding to produce snow and rain...
at GE, became the model for Dr. Felix Hoenikker. Vonnegut said in an interview with
The NationThe Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.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."
Plot
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 bombedDuring the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945, and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events are the only use of nuclear weapons in war to date.For six months...
. While researching this topic, John becomes involved with the children of Felix Hoenikker, a fictional
Nobel laureate physicistThe Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
who helped develop the atomic bomb. John travels to
IliumIlium is a fictitious town in eastern New York state, used as a setting for many of Kurt Vonnegut's novels.The name most likely refers to Troy, New York , although Troy is mentioned as a separate city in Player Piano. In all other respects, Ilium very closely resembles Schenectady, New York, with...
, 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-nineIce-nine is a fictional material appearing in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle. It is supposed to be a more stable polymorph of water than common ice which instead of melting at 0 degrees Celsius , melts at 45.8 °C...
, 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 crystalA seed crystal is a small piece of single crystal/polycrystal material from which a large crystal of the same material typically is to be grown...
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
creoleA creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
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
BokononismBokononism is a religion invented by Kurt Vonnegut as a fictional religion, and practiced by many of the characters in his novel Cat's Cradle.It is based on the concept of foma, which are defined as harmless untruths...
, 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 begrudgingly 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.
Setting
The Republic of San Lorenzo is a
fictional countryA fictional country is a country that is made up for fictional stories, and does not exist in real life, or one that people believe in without proof....
where much of the book's second half takes place.
San Lorenzo is a tiny, rocky island nation located in the
Caribbean SeaThe Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean located in the tropics of the Western hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico and Central America to the west and southwest, to the north by the Greater Antilles, and to the east by the Lesser Antilles....
, positioned in the relative vicinity of
Puerto RicoPuerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
. San Lorenzo has only one city, its seaside capital of Bolivar. The country's form of government is a
dictatorshipA dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator. It has three possible meanings:...
, under the rule of ailing president "Papa" Monzano, who is a staunch ally of the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and a fierce opponent of
communismCommunism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. No
legislatureA legislature is a kind of deliberative assembly with the power to pass, amend, and repeal laws. The law created by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law. In addition to enacting laws, legislatures usually have exclusive authority to raise or lower taxes and adopt the budget and...
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
taxiA taxicab, also taxi or cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choice...
running in the entire country.
The language of San Lorenzo is a fictitious English-based
creole languageA creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
that is referred to as "the San Lorenzan dialect." The San Lorenzan national anthem is based on the tune of
Home on the Range"Home on the Range" is the state song of the American state of Kansas. Dr. Brewster M. Higley originally wrote the words in a poem called "My Western Home" in the early 1870s in Smith County, Kansas. The poem was first published in a December 1873 issue of the Smith County Pioneer under the title...
. 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
dollarThe United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
; 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-PrincePort-au-Prince is the capital and largest city of the Caribbean nation of Haiti. The city's population was 704,776 as of the 2003 census, and was officially estimated to have reached 897,859 in 2009....
during the American occupation in 1922, and in transit to Miami, was shipwrecked on San Lorenzo. McCabe, along with accomplice Lionel Boyd Johnson from
TobagoTobago is the smaller of the two main islands that make up the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. It is located in the southern Caribbean, northeast of the island of Trinidad and southeast of Grenada. The island lies outside the hurricane belt...
, 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,
BokononismBokononism is a religion invented by Kurt Vonnegut as a fictional religion, and practiced by many of the characters in his novel Cat's Cradle.It is based on the concept of foma, which are defined as harmless untruths...
, a religion based on enjoying life through its untruths. Bokononism, founded by McCabe's accomplice Boyd Johnson , 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 ritesThe Last Rites are the very last prayers and ministrations given to many Christians before death. The last rites go by various names and include different practices in different Christian traditions...
.
Characters
- 'The narrator' is a writer named John, also known as Jonah, who describes the events in the book with humorous and sarcastic detail. While writing a book on the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945, and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events are the only use of nuclear weapons in war to date.For six months...
, he becomes involved with the Hoenikker children. He begins the book by stating "Call me JonahJonah is the name given in the Hebrew Bible to a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BC, the eponymous central character in the Book of Jonah, famous for being swallowed by a fish or a whale, depending on translation...
," alluding to the first line of Herman Melville's Moby Dick. In a way, John and IshmaelIshmael is a figure in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, and was Abraham's first born child according to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Ishmael was born of Abraham's marriage to Sarah's handmaiden Hagar...
, the narrator for Moby Dick, share the same traits as simultaneously a protagonist and a minor character.
- Felix Hoenikker is the "Father of the Atom Bomb." Felix Hoenikker was proclaimed one of the smartest scientists on Earth. An eccentric and emotionless man, he is depicted as amoral and apathetic towards anything other than his research. He needed only something to keep him busy, such as in his role as one of the "Fathers of the Atomic Bomb
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
," and in his creation of "ice-nine," a potentially catastrophic substance with the capability to destroy all life on Earth, but which he saw merely as a mental puzzle (a MarineThe United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
general suggested developing a substance that could freeze and compact mud so soldiers could run across it more easily). During experiments with "ice nine", Felix takes a nap in his rocking chair and dies. It is the narrator's quest for biographical details about Hoenikker that provides both the background and the connecting thread between the various subsections of the story.
- Dr. Asa Breed is Felix Hoenikker's supervisor. He takes the narrator, John, around Illium and to the General Forge and Foundry Company where the late Felix worked. Later in the tour, Dr. Breed becomes upset with John for "misunderstanding what a scientist is, what a scientist does."
- Newton "Newt" Hoenikker: The midget son of famed scientist Felix Hoenikker, and a painter. He is the brother of both Frank and Angela Hoenikker. His main hobby is painting minimalist abstract works. He briefly had an affair with a Russian midget dancer named Zinka, who turned out to be a KGB agent sent to steal ice-nine for the Soviet Union.
- Emily Hoenikker is Felix Hoenikker's beautiful wife, who died giving birth to Newt Hoenniker. According to Dr. Asa Breed, the complications at Newt's birth were the result of a pelvic injury she sustained in a car accident some time before. Breed was a lover of Emily before she got married to Felix.
- Franklin "Frank" Hoenikker is Felix Hoenikker's son, and Major General of San Lorenzo. He is the brother of Newt and Angela Hoenikker. He is an utterly technically-minded person who is unable to make decisions except for giving technical advice. His main hobby is building models.
- Angela Hoenikker Conners is Felix Hoenikker's daughter and a clarinetist. She is the sister of Frank and Newt Hoenikker, and is married to Harrison C. Conners. In contrast to her midget brother, Angela is unusually tall for a woman. She used to take care of her father after her mother's death, and also she's acting as a kind of mother figure to Newt. She and her brothers all have samples of ice-nine, which they found along with their father's body, dead in his chair.
- Bokonon co-founded San Lorenzo (along with Earl McCabe) and created the religion of Bokononism, which he asked McCabe to outlaw. He was born as Lionel Boyd Johnson.
- Earl McCabe co-founded San Lorenzo and is a marine deserter who ruled San Lorenzo for many years.
- "Papa" Monzano is the ailing dictator of San Lorenzo. He is the adopted father of Mona Monzano.
- Mona Aamons Monzano is the adopted daughter of "Papa" Monzano, who marries John before dying of Ice-Nine.
- Julian Castle is the multi-millionaire ex-owner of Castle Sugar Cooperation, whom John travels to San Lorenzo to interview. He abandoned his business ventures to set up and operate a humanitarian hospital in the jungle of San Lorenzo.
- H. Lowe Crosby is a bicycle manufacturer John meets on a plane to San Lorenzo. His main goal is to move his factory to San Lorenzo, so he can run it with cheap labor.
- Hazel Crosby is the wife of H. Lowe Crosby, who asks all the Hoosiers she meets around the globe to call her "Mom."
- Philip Castle is the son of Julian Castle, and the operator of the hotel Casa Mona on the island on San Lorenzo. He also writes a history of San Lorenzo that the narrator reads on his flight to the island. Bokonon taught both him and Mona when they were young. Through index reading of Castle's book, Claire Minton figures out that he's a homosexual.
- Horlick Minton is the new American ambassador to San Lorenzo, whom John meets on a plane. He was blacklisted as a Communist sympathizer during the McCarthy-era.
- Claire Minton is the wife of the new American ambassador to San Lorenzo, and is an index writer.
Terms introduced in the novel
The religion of the people of San Lorenzo, called Bokononism, encompasses concepts unique to the novel, with San Lorenzan names such as:
- karass - a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will. The people can be thought of as fingers in a Cat's Cradle.
- duprass - a karass of only two people, who almost always die within a week of each other. The typical example is a loving couple who work together for a great purpose.
- granfalloon
A granfalloon, in the fictional religion of Bokononism , is defined as a "false karass." That is, it is a group of people who outwardly choose or claim to have a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless.-Examples:The most commonly purported granfalloons are...
- a false karass; i.e., a group of people who imagine they have a connection that does not really exist. An example is "Hoosiers"; Hoosiers are people from Indiana, and Hoosiers have no true spiritual destiny in common, so really share little more than a name.
- wampeter - the central point of a karass
- foma - harmless untruths
- wrang-wrang - Someone who steers a Bokononist away from their line of perception. For example the narrator of the book is steered away from Nihilism when his Nihilist house sitter kills his cat and leaves his apartment in disrepair.
- kan-kan - An object or item that brings a person into their karass. The narrator states in the book that his kan-kan was the book he wrote about the Hiroshima bombing.
- sinookas - The intertwining "tendrils" of people's lives.
- vin-dit - a sudden shove in the direction of Bokononism
- saroon - to acquiesce to a vin-dit
- stuppa - a fogbound child (i.e. an idiot)
- duffle - the destiny of thousands of people placed on one "stuppa"
- sin-wat - a person who wants all of somebody's love for themself
- pool-pah - shit storm, but in some contexts: wrath of God
- Busy, busy, busy - words Bokononists whisper when they think about how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is
- Now I will destroy the whole world - last words of a Bokononist before committing suicide
- boko-maru - the supreme act of worship of the Bokononists, which is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the naked soles of the feet of two persons
- zah-mah-ki-bo - Inevitable destiny
- Borasisi and Pabu, the Sun and Moon; the binary trans-Neptunian object 66652 Borasisi
66652 Borasisi , provisionally known as , is a trans-Neptunian object discovered in 1999 by A. Trujillo, J. Luu and D. Jewitt and identified as binary in 2003 by K...
and its moon 66652 Borasisi I Pabu now bear their names.
- Borasisi, the Sun, held Pabu, the Moon, in his arms and hoped that Pabu would bear him a fiery child. But poor Pabu gave birth to children that were cold, that did not burn...Then poor Pabu herself was cast away, and she went to live with her favorite child, which was Earth.
Reception
Theodore SturgeonTheodore Sturgeon was an American science fiction author.His most famous novel is More Than Human .-Biography:...
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." 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."
Awards and nominations
Cat's Cradle was nominated for a
Hugo Award for Best NovelThe Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...
in 1964.
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
- The book has been optioned by Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is an American actor and film producer. He has received many awards, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Aviator , and has been nominated by the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild and the British Academy of Film and Television...
's production company, Appian Way Productions. James V. HartJames V. "Jim" Hart is an American screenwriter and author.-Career:He wrote the 2005 children's novel Capt. Hook: The Adventures of a Notorious Youth, a prequel depicting J. M. Barrie's villain Captain Hook, the nemesis of Peter Pan, when Hook was a youngster...
, screenwriter for the film ContactContact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film adapted from the Carl Sagan novel of the same name and directed by Robert Zemeckis. Both Sagan and wife Ann Druyan wrote the story outline for the film adaptation of Contact....
and his son Jake Hart have been linked to the developing script.
- A calypso musical adaptation was presented by the Untitled Theater Company #61 in New York in 2008.
- Vonnegut collaborated with US composer Dave Soldier
Dave Soldier is an American composer and performer residing in New York.- Musical works :Some of his work is based on unusual collaborations. In the Thai Elephant Orchestra he built giant musical instruments on which he trained a group of elephants to improvise...
for a CD titled Ice-9 Ballads, featuring nine songs with lyrics taken from Cat's Cradle. Vonnegut narrated his lyrics to Soldier's music.
- A straight theatrical adaptation of the book was presented in Washington, DC in August and September 2010 by Longacre Lea Productions.
External links