Cat's Cradle (1997 Film)

''Cat's Cradle'' is a satirical postmodern novel, with science fiction elements, by American writer Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut's fourth novel, it was first published in 1963, exploring and satirizing issues of science, technology, the purpose of religion, and the arms race, often through the use of morbid humor.

Synopsis

Background

The first-person everyman narrator, a professional writer introducing himself as Jonah (but apparently named John and never named again), frames the plot as a flashback. Set in the mid-20th century, the plot revolves around a time when he was planning to write a book called ''The Day the World Ended'' about what people were doing on the day of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Throughout, he also intersperses meaningful as well as sarcastic passages and sentiments from an odd religious scripture known as ''The Books of Bokonon''. Most of the events of the novel occur before the narrator was converted to his current religion, Bokononism.

Plot summary

While researching for his upcoming book, the narrator travels to Ilium, New York, the hometown of the late Felix Hoenikker, a co-creator of the atomic bomb and Nobel laureate physicist, to interview Hoenikker's children, coworkers, and other acquaintances. There, he learns of a substance called ''ice-nine'', created for military use by Hoenikker and now likely in the possession of his three adult children. ''Ice-nine'' is an alternative structure of water that is solid at room temperature and acts as a seed crystal upon contact with ordinary liquid water, causing that liquid water to instantly freeze and transform into more ''ice-nine''. Among several odd unfoldings in Ilium, the narrator meets Hoenniker's younger son, a dwarf named Newt, who recounts that his father was doing nothing more than playing the string game "cat's cradle" when the first bomb was dropped.

Eventually, a magazine assignment takes the narrator to the (fictional) Caribbean island of San Lorenzo, one of the poorest countries on Earth. On the plane ride, the narrator is surprised to see Newt and also meets the newly appointed US ambassador to San Lorenzo, who provides a comprehensive guidebook on San Lorenzo's unusual culture and history. The guidebook describes a locally influential semi- parody religious movement called Bokononism, which combines irreverent, nihilistic, and cynical observations about life and God's will; an emphasis on coincidences and serendipity; and both thoughtful and humorous sayings and rituals into a holy text called ''The Books of Bokonon''. Bokonon, the religion's founder, was a former leader of the island who created Bokononism as part of a utopian project to give people purpose and community in the face of the island's unsolvable poverty and squalor. As a deliberate attempt to give Bokononism an alluring sense of forbidden glamor and hope, the religion is nominally outlawed, which forced Bokonon to live in "hiding" in the jungle. The current dictator, "Papa" Monzano, threatens all Bokononists with impalement on a large hook. Intrigued by Bokononism, the narrator later discovers the strange reality that nearly all residents of San Lorenzo, even including "Papa" Monzano himself, practice it in secret, and punishment by the hook is, in actuality, quite rare.

On San Lorenzo, the plane passengers are greeted by "Papa" Monzano, his beautiful adopted daughter Mona (whom the narrator intensely lusts after), and a crowd of some five thousand San Lorenzans. Monzano is ill from cancer and wants his successor to be Frank Hoenikker: Monzano's personal bodyguard and, coincidentally, Felix Hoenikker's other son. Frank achieved this position by giving "Papa" Monzano a piece of ''ice-nine''. However, Frank, uncomfortable with leading, confronts the narrator in private and somewhat randomly offers him the presidency. Startled at first, the narrator grudgingly accepts after he is promised the beautiful Mona for his bride. Newt reiterates the idea of the cat's cradle, implying that the game, with its invisible cat, is an appropriate symbol for nonsense and the meaninglessness of life. Soon after, the bedridden "Papa" Monzano commits suicide by swallowing ''ice-nine'', whereupon his corpse instantly turns into solid ''ice-nine''. Frank Hoenikker admits to giving Monzano ''ice-nine'', and the Hoenikkers explain that when they were young their father would give them hints about the existence of ''ice-nine'' while experimenting with it in the kitchen. After their father's death, they gathered chunks of the substance into thermos flasks and have kept them ever since.

Festivities for the narrator's presidential inauguration begin, but during an air show performed by San Lorenzo's fighter planes, one of the planes malfunctions and crashes into the seaside palace, causing Monzano's still-frozen body to fall into the sea. Instantly, all the water in the world's seas, rivers, and groundwater transforms into solid ''ice-nine''. The freezing of the world's oceans immediately causes violent tornadoes to ravage the Earth, but the narrator manages to escape with Mona to a secret bunker beneath the palace. When the initial storms subside after several days, they emerge. Exploring the island for survivors, they discover a mass grave where all the surviving San Lorenzans committed suicide by touching ''ice-nine'' from the landscape to their mouths on the facetious advice of Bokonon, who has left a note of explanation. Displaying a mix of grief for her people and resigned amusement, Mona promptly follows suit and dies.

The horrified narrator is discovered by a few other survivors, including Newt and Frank Hoenikker, and he lives with them in a cave for several months, during which time he writes the contents of the book. Driving through the barren wasteland one day, he spots Bokonon himself, who is contemplating what the last words of ''The Books of Bokonon'' should be. Bokonon states that if he were younger, he would place a book about human stupidity on the peak of San Lorenzo's highest mountain, swallow ''ice-nine'', and die while thumbing his nose at God.

Themes

Many of Vonnegut's recurring themes are prevalent in ''Cat's Cradle'', most notably the issues of free will and man's relation to technology.Grossman, Edward. "Vonnegut & His Audience." ''Commentary'' (July 1974): 40–46. Rpt. in ''Contemporary Literary Criticism''. Ed. Carolyn Riley and Phyllis Carmel Mendelson. Vol. 5. Detroit: Gale, 1976. The former is embodied in the creation of Bokononism, an artificial religion created to make life bearable to the beleaguered inhabitants of San Lorenzo through acceptance and delight in the inevitability of everything that happens. The latter is demonstrated by the development and exploitation of ''ice-nine'', which is conceived with indifference but is misused to disastrous ends. In his 1969 address to the American Physical Society, Vonnegut describes the inspiration behind ice-nine and its creator as the type of "old-fashioned scientist who isn't interested in people", and draws connections to nuclear weapons.

More topically, ''Cat's Cradle'' takes the threat of nuclear destruction in the Cold War as a major theme. The Cuban Missile Crisis, in which world powers collided around a small Caribbean island, bringing the world to the brink of mutual assured destruction, occurred in 1962, and much of the novel can be seen as allegorical.

Style

Like most of Vonnegut's work, irony, morbid humor, and parody are used heavily throughout. ''Cat's Cradle'', despite its relatively short length, contains 127 discrete chapters, some of which are verses from the Book of Bokonon. Vonnegut himself claimed that his books "are essentially mosaics made up of a whole bunch of tiny little chips... and each chip is a joke."

Background

After World War II, Kurt Vonnegut worked in the public relations department for 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. When science fiction author H. G. Wells

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