Cats Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, deals with religion, science, and the end of the world; its major theme involves the symbolic nature of the title of the book. The theme of the cat's cradle is used throughout the book to represent many of the truths, as viewed by Vonnegut, that are found in society. A cat's cradle is essentially a game played by all ages and almost all nationalities; even the Eskimos know of it. It is a game using an endless string, a loop, six feet in circumference, which is wound, looped, or strung between the hands of the players. It symbolically and historically is used to represent many things, like stories, or figures like the one figure which is its name sake, the cat's cradle. In actuality it is still, according to Vonnegut, "nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands." This in turn gives Vonnegut's definition for many of Man's creations in the world. One of Kurt Vonnegut's major areas of examination or ridicule in Cat's Cradle is the world's religions. To elaborate on the point of religion, Vonnegut invents his own religion, Bokonism, in which the first essential rule is, according to Bokonon, the character inventor of the religion, that "all of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless l
Vonnegut's unspoken metaphors to the cat's cradle can be applied to almost any part of human culture, government, religion, marriage, or an endless number of out looks of society. Religion could just be a comforting game designed with harmless lies to allow humanity to maintain any its sanity. Cat's Cradle is in actuality a book of "man's stupidity”, written by John/Jonah after the end of the world; this book is to be presented to God by him on the highest mountain as he freezes himself into a statue thumbing his nose at "You Know Who." In Bokonism God gives no meaning to the world, but man asks the meaning. God only replies that if there is meaning then man must give everything meaning. Vonnegut uses a great amount of Cat's Cradle to focus on his opinions of the importance of science and the nuclear arms race. He, however, does not depict science as he does religion in relation to the symbolic string figure. Vonnegut's scientific theme is the antithesis of that of religion, in that people commonly view science as a game, as the cat's cradle, when people really should carefully plan out the movements of science. This idea and the adverse doomed affects of untamed science are written into the roles of Felix Hoenikker and his children, Newt, Ang
Some topics in this essay:
Cat's Cradle,
Newt Hoenikker,
San Larenzo,
Felix Hoenikker,
John/Jonah Vonnegut's,
cat's cradle,
Bokonism God,
Kurt Vonnegut's,
Angela Frank,
religion people,
x's somebody's hands,
cat's cradle actuality,
cradle actuality,
makes religion,
x's somebody's,
bunch x's,
society cat's cradle,
somebody's hands,
bunch x's somebody's,
felix hoenikker,
resulting emptiness,
kurt vonnegut's,
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Approximate Word count = 847
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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