Cat's Cradle

A few years ago in a burst of consumerism in a Barnes and Noble, I bought up all the Kurt Vonnegut novels I wanted to own. A few of them I had read before, but did not have copies of: Slaughterhouse-Five (which is in my top ten all time of novels) and The Sirens of Titan. I have been reading them periodically since then--first Player Piano, then Breakfast of Champions last winter, and today I finished Cat's Cradle.

As with much of Vonnegut's fiction, Cat's Cradle can be described as comedic, or perhaps absurd, but it is also one of the bleakest books I've ever read. The metaphor of the title seems to suggest that life is meaningless (the string game of cat's cradle creates neither a cat or a cradle, and it is compared to religion--where is the cat? Where is the cradle?), and the fate of mankind is not a happy one.

The story concerns an unnamed writer who has become interested in the (fictional) "Father of the A Bomb," who also created something called Ice-9, which is a form of ice that freezes at room temperature, thus it's exposure to the Earth's water supply would end life as we know it. It is has fallen into the hands of this scientist's children, one of whom is a happy-go-lucky midget, another a love-lorn woman, and the third a misfit who has used his Ice-9 to become a general on a Caribbean island. This island is the home to a cynical man named Bokonon, who has created a religion built on lies. Vonnegut explains much of the principles of this religion throughout the novel.

Also typical of Vonnegut, the novel is written in simple, straight-forward style. Chapters are only a page or two, and there is little artifice or ornamentation. It is in this deceptively simple way that he exposes us to the fundamental blocks on humankind--race in Breakfast of Champions, fascism in Mother Night, and in Cat's Cradle the balance between techology and religion. A terrific book, but it may not make you want to whistle a happy tune.