Cat's Cradle

I am just going to come out and say it: I am pretty sure that Kurt Vonnegut is my spirit animal. When I read his works, I feel like he is talking to a darkness that has lived inside of me that has been protected by comedic outbursts and nurtured by the sorrows of the world. Vonnegut’s books are strange, fantastical, and confronting. They make me question my values, my beliefs, and what way is really up. Cat’s Cradle is no exception. The opening lines read:

Nothing in this book is true.

‘Live by the foma* that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.’

The Book of Bokonon. 1:5

*Harmless untruths

Bokononism is a religion found on an island republic in the Caribbean, San Lorenzo. Their catchphrase is: “Busy, busy, busy,” show more which is used whenever there are lots of things afoot. The Bokononist life is simple and blunt.They believe:

Everything is a lie.

Nothing can be true.

Love the people around you.

Give into your karass* and the kan-kan* that takes you there.

(*”We Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God’s Will without every discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a Karass by Bokonon, and the instrument, the kan-kan…”)

There is a lot of beauty in this. It might seem rather bleak to think that everything is a lie. However, the concept is not uncommon in philosophy. It stems from the notion that there are no origins because everything is essentially made up of everything else. Theorists like Jaques Derrida, and Michel Foucault explore this concept. So if there are no true origins, where do we centre ourselves? This comes from the idea that our perception of reality, what we think to be true, is only a subjective interpretation. Reality can only exist in multiplicity: multiple subjective perspectives that we interpret and represent through speech, art, actions, and everyday life. Interpretation and representation as ways to understand the world, stem from extremely old concepts that come from Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Poetics from Ancient Greece.

Love the people around you (I guess you don’t always had to rub feet). This is simple. And while it is rooted in all religions it often interpreted, I believe, wrongly. There is usually a catch. Love the people around, as long as they… Love the people around you, provided they… Too many times I see this love turned into a moral high ground. I love you because you do not know what you do, really means, what I think you do is wrong, but I am going to sit here smugly and judge you through the lens of my own subjective perceptions of religion and life. Whether there is such a thing as pure love, and unbiased love, I don’t know. But it isn’t a bad thing to strive for?

Your karass and your kan-kan. While this might seem fatalistic-you have no control over your destiny so just give into it- I like to think of it as give into your own desires and follow where they take you (as long as your desires don’t involve mass murder). Too many times we have a voice inside ourselves that whispers, “What if…” and this voice is policed by our internalised cultural and social expectations: “Don’t do that… People will think your a fool/wrong/stupid/strange.” Life is short, and as the Bokononists say: those who rise from the mud will return to it.

I’m not sure Bokononism is for me, but it has taught me some great life lessons with sharp irony and blackest of humours around. Thank you Kurt. show less

Every time I read Vonnegut, I expect something weird, and I always underestimate how weird it will be. His absurd satirical style can be kind of exhausting at times, but entertaining nonetheless. This was a really interesting read.

His satirical takes on science, politics, religion, and mutually assured destruction were entertaining, and pretty on the nose. The culture he creates in San Lorenzo, and the religion he creates in Bokononism were fascinating. I found myself engrossed in these things. I was kind of wishing the Books of Bokononism were real so I could read more about it.

The plot itself isn't really anything to write home about (pun intended). However the main driving narrative device for this is that it's a book, about a book, show more about a book, which is kind of hilarious. I wish there would have been a little more after the Ice-9 incident, however I realize that the point is that it happened, not what happens afterwards. show less

The title's string game is used as a symbol to express the meaninglessness of virtually everything in this absurdist drama. Religion? Bunk. Sex and romance? Nothing but comedy. Politics? Gawd help you. Science? Probably the death of you. There's no where to turn for any ground to stand on, random events will just keep rolling at you. Which of these events are the good news, and which are the bad? Impossible to tell.

Yes, there is a plot of sorts. Our hero is interested in writing the biography of a philanthropist on a tiny island in the Caribbean. In the course of research he gets mixed up with the island's religion, tumbles into a romance, wrestles with its politics, and eventually gets confronted by some pretty formidable science. None show more of it offers him a whole lot of comfort, but if he can overlook that and follow the model of others by just embracing the madness he might stand a chance. Or the madness might embrace him back.

Is this nothing but a pack of playing cards, or an allegory for the lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis? I don't know, it's impossible to tell. show less

4/5

No damn cat. No damn cradle. Cat's Cradle is a satire of some of the largest structures in society, showcasing the emptiness of their promises, and questioning our free will to change anything about our lives. Virtually plotless, like many of Vonneguts other works, Cat's Cradle is bleak, playful, absurdist, subtle, and strikingly unsubtle all at the same time. I won't even provide a 'plot' overview, because there would be simply too much to cover.

The closest a book has ever come to matching the energy, pacing, and tone of a Wes Anderson movie. I can see all the events of the book so clearly represented in the colors that Anderson uses, with the actors that frequently collaborate with him. I usually groan when someone draws show more comparisons between completely unrelated works of literature and film, but I just can't get this one off my mind.

Thematically very focused on the hollowness of many facets of modern society/life. Religion and science are specifically targeted as structures that lack the morality and empathy that they tout. Yet there is also a thread of Vonnegut discussing the necessary and welcome 'untruths' that we tell ourselves to better understand our world, to make ourselves happy and useful. Very interesting to see Vonnegut's perception of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project as indifferent to the ramification of their discoveries. There's also criticism of US government and politics, specifically as they relate to banana republics in central America.

Ice-9 is a hall of fame level SF concept, one that I use a benchmark of creativity in the genre, though it's hardly the focus on the novel. Vonnegut focuses the bulk of the novel on Bokononism, and it is here that he makes many of his thematic points. Some aspects of Cat's Cradle haven't aged so well though. Severally of the characters are drawn with a ham fist and stereotypical representations, and the prose itself isn't anything to write home about.

I struggled finding any cohesion to my thoughts on this work, even though I've now read it twice. I'm not frustrated by this though, more so puzzled in pleasing way. There's depth and nuance here that doesn't make itself plain on the surface. show less

Those books that you read, and after finishing them you're just astounded by their revelatory nature? As fleeting as it may be, the book makes you an insufferable fan of the author where you have to tell everyone how great it is and how it's changed your life? Yeah, that was Cat's Cradle for me. The book is unyielding in its sarcasm and almost nihilistic worldview, but complementing that is one of the more playful depictions of religion in print. If I were to read it now I'd feel differently about it, but for the 18 year old me, this was a spectacular book and one that has really informed my fiction reading for the last decade.

"Science is magic that works."

Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding ‘fathers’ of the atomic bomb, has left behind three eccentric children and deadly legacy to the world, ‘ice-nine’, a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet known about by only a handful of people among them a crazed Caribbean dictator.

Cat’s Cradle was first published in 1963 there are elements that speak of its time. There is misogyny and racial slurs; I'm still unsure as to whether or not a black leader was pivotal to the destruction of mankind and that a white man came along as saviour but failed was meant to be ironic, thought provoking or simply racist. I guess it boils down to the individual reader. But the story covers some pretty big show more issues, nuclear war, environmental concerns and the role of governments as well.
In particular it preys on our deepest fears of not only witnessing Armageddon but worse still, surviving it. A theme that still feels relevant today.

Likewise, the pseudo-religion of Bokononism, although on the face of it ridiculous, resonates with how some societies are looking at religion not only for comfort but also for explanations to the big questions of life. The story seems to be warning that easy answers are not always the correct ones whilst warning that science can be a boon to humanity but left unchecked can also lead to its ultimate destruction.

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before."

On the surface, this is a tale about a dysfunctional family yet it also looks at human's need for family, relationships and love and the strange things that some people do to achieve it.

This is my fifth book by the author but my least favourite. The tale is told in Vonnegut's distinctive deadpan irony and bitter satire that I usually like but ultimately this one is just too weird for me. Yet despite its apparent depressing tone I found it somewhat uplifting as I felt that hope rather than despair was the underlining message and as such this book deserves to continue to be read. show less

This was my third read of Cat's Cradle. I am not much of a re-reader, but there are a few books I come back to as I need them and this is one. (As is Slaughterhouse Five. Vonnegut is one of four authors with multiple books on my re-read list.) Each time I read this book it tells me something different. This time it told me that people, particularly Americans, have always ignored what was in front of their face, choosing their personal folklore over verifiable facts. It is fair to say QAnon would not have surprised Mr. Vonnegut one bit. And it would not have surprised Vonnegut how most people pay no attention to assaults on liberty and decency and the survival of humans on earth, opting to just play cat's cradle, to fiddle while Rome show more burns.

I won't go much into the plot, since thousands have recounted it already. All you need to know is that the narrator ("Call me Jonah") is purportedly writing a book about what real people were doing when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He ends up getting entangled in the lives of the unusual adult children of one of the A-bomb's inventors who was also working on something as lethal as the bomb (though different) at the time of his death. The subject of his last work was created in response to the Marines asking if he could "do something about mud" since Marines were tired of being dirty. As mentioned the inventor dies, the children have the new invention. The eldest son finds himself in a position of power on a colonized island, and his estranged sister and brother meet up with him on the island because he is supposed to get married. Hijinks of a sort (an apocalyptic sort) ensue.

I will say this is a post-modern satire aimed squarely at "pure" science, organized religion, and America. It is a post-apocalyptic/pre-apocalyptic 2.0/post-apocalyptic 2.0 story. I learned while reading this that Cat's Cradle was Vonnegut's Masters thesis at University of Chicago where he earned a Masters in Anthropology and that factoid actually changed the way I read the book.

The important stuff: This book is very funny provided one appreciates ice cold irony and has some basic grounding in 20th century American history. This is also one of the canniest 20th century novels I have read mocking American colonialism (there are many earlier books that delightfully stuck it to the British Empire of course.) This is often classified as science fiction, but as with Slaughterhouse Five I think it is a vast overstatement to call this sci-fi and people who read it looking for that are sure to be disappointed. Read it as one of the smartest sendups of nationalism, tribalism and religion. Vonnegut was a genius. He could say more with 100 pages of jokes that most cultural commentators say in 800 page heavily footnoted tomes, and in addition to saying a lot, it is hilarious. Win-win. show less