Please respond to anything in the book that interested you. Here are some ideas to get you started thinking:
- Discuss the title. What do you think the image of the cat’s cradle means as we progress through the novel?
- Consider the opening sentence: “Call me Jonah.” What are the implications here?
- Is it possible to construe this sentence, that appears in Chapter Four, in a way that makes sense: “All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.” Or is it simply a logical conundrum?
- Discuss Vonnegut’s critique of a science that led to the development of the atom bomb and the Cold War.
- Perhaps the central conundrum of the novel is trying to figure out what our attitude toward Bokonon and Bokononism should be. Are we meant to reject Bokonon as a charlatan, a false prophet who cruelly and blithely leads human beings to mass suicide at the end of the novel? Or are we to see him as a kindly and wise spiritual leader who provides people with the hope they need to survive their harsh and unforgiving lives?
- Discuss gender in the novel. What are we to think of Mona Aamons Monzano and her relationship with the novel’s narrator? Like many books we will read this semester, the novel depicts a temporary retreat from chaos and destruction into a temporary safe home, although this home is an “oubliette.” Implications?
- Discuss metafiction in the novel. What does the book seem to say about art and storytelling? What about all the books within the book?
The metafiction in the novels is very interesting. There seemed to be some humor Vonnegut directed towards poets, the way he portrayed his “poet friend” who stayed in his apartment briefly was satirical, and most the poems written by Bokonon himself resonate with rudimentary words and crass rhymes. In Chapter 55, “never index your own book”, he seemed to be poking fun of the academic side as well as the creative side of literature.
Mona Ammons Monzano was the object of male fantasy throughout the story, and I had trouble seeing the depth beyond that in her character. In fact it seemed that a lot of characters fell flat while the plot made its twists and turns. I would love to learn more about the symbolic significance of her character as well as Bokonon himself.
Perceiving Bokonon is a conundrum. I don’t feel that he was a mere charlatan. One of the major arguments in the story is that truth and lies rely on each other to coexist, they are the two sides of the same coin, and the tension between them is where live energy is derived. This belief is not treated with scorn and dismissal from Vonnegut directly. The ending feels to me a sad but open ending, open to more doubts and questioning.
I was interested in the juxtaposition between the portrayal of Mona vs the other female characters in Cat’s Cradle. We know Mona is unlike every other female on San Lorenzo, the others being in poor health and characterized as ugly and unhygienic. She is coveted by the men around her, older and younger, platonically connected (as with Bokonon and Papa) as well as romantically/sexually/spiritually coveted. She seems to believe this is her best asset – that she plays a spiritual role in the community and that the sexual element at play is one which unites people and gives her spiritual freedom. She has a larger than life quality, much like the paintings she inspired. Compared to other female characters (I’m thinking of Emily and a Angela Hoenikker, Asa Breed, the indexer, the Hoosier, and the Russian dancer) it seems that she is less rounded, more childlike, and altogether a symbol of the lies of San Lorenzo rather than a person who is capable of self-determination. The most self-determination she shows is when she rejects the idea of sexual monogamy and when she kills herself (even this is tainted by Bokonon’s influence). Her engagements, her religion, her appearance are all cultivated by the men who raised her and the politics of the island itself. Meanwhile the other most affectionately described woman in the book is Emily Hoenikker, although she is more an enigma than a character due to her death and the refusal of Felix to elaborate even for his children what she was like. The most we learn about her comes from the other men who loved her before she fell in love with Felix. The other, more flawed, women are given purposes beyond men but are shown as ugly, weak-willed, or talented in only one way (such as playing the clarinet, acting as a spy, or providing administrative savvy, or a skill with indexes). Is this because the speaker has a limited understanding of women, does it add to the satire or distract from it?
“Call me Jonah” is the first line of the novel and a clear reference to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick which begins with the narrator Ishmael introducing himself in an identical manner. Any ambitious work of literature attempts to take on what came before it. I don’t believe that any novel exists in an isolated vacuum. Some works are just more deliberate about who are they are trying to converse with. Cat’s Cradle is a novel with a broad scope that cannot be ignored and it is in conversation with Moby Dick in several different ways. Both protagonists begin journeys at the start of the novel and are in search of something larger than themselves. Both novels end with the narrators stranded far away from home due to the events of their journey. Both of their journeys involve the pursuit of a goal that quickly gets out of hand. I think it is also important to note that Vonnegut chose to name his narrator Jonah which harkens back to the story of Jonah and the Whale from the Bible which is, in a way, a reference to Moby Dick as well although in an oblique manner. Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle uses this journey model in order to show the absurdity of humanity’s relationship to technology as well as their faith in it.
Trying to make sense of the difference between truths and lies in Cat’s Cradle made for an interesting and mind-boggling read. While I initially thought that the book was about a bunch of nonsense that characters ultimately clung to in order to make themselves feel better about life, I found that the lies being told had a much deeper – and perhaps true – meaning. “All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies” (16). In the context of the story as a whole, I didn’t find this to be a logical conundrum but rather an indictment regarding many of the central problems addressed throughout the novel. Most blaringly obvious is Bokononism itself, which this line prefaces. When Bokonon (born Lionel Boyd Johnson) and Edward McCabe create Bokononism, they do so out of a desire to create a utopia and distract the people from the misery of poverty and starvation. “And I made up lies/So that they all fit nice,/And I made this sad world/A par-a-dise” (109). While the religion itself was a lie, it was built off of a true desire to alleviate suffering. The shameless nature of the lie is the fact that it did nothing beyond creating nice feelings – it didn’t serve to really help anyone. Decades after it’s creation the people are still poor, starving, and without real hope.
Another moment in the novel that made me see the sense in this line from Chapter Four was Ambassador Minton’s speech at the disastrous Hundred Martyrs to Democracy commemoration. “Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and show of flags and well-oiled guns” (206). Minton calls out the celebration, and the nationalism behind it, as grotesquely inappropriate. What would be better, he argues, is to be as animalistic as war itself. For Minton, and maybe Kurt Vonnegut by extension, war is not a noble affair but a pig-headed one. The shameless lie that country’s tell, emblazoned on the wreath he throws in the sea – Pro Patria – is paid for by the truth of human loss and suffering.
Finally, I also found it interesting that Vonnegut himself adds a similar line to the prefatory material of Cat’s Cradle. “Nothing in this book is true.” Ultimately, this is a good description of any fiction work. The characters and plot are made up, even if based on true events and people. However, fiction also conveys truths about the world around us. In Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut highlights important truths about the danger inherent in detaching science from humanity and living a life characterized by lies, however good intentioned they may be.
Hi Katie,
I found Bokononism very interesting but funny in an ironic way. While I believe that there is nothing wrong with having a different religion even if it is an eccentric one, I find that this religion is like a slap in the face to Christianity. It is purposefully made up of lies and the person who made the rules up, I think, is laughing like ‘look at these fools’.
Many rulers have made religion up to keep people in line and submissive. That is what I see here. Bokononism was a staged phenomenon and at the end of the world, Bokonon himself thumbed his nose at God because he followed through with the lie and got many to follow his lies all the way til death.
With this being the first time I’ve read Cat’s Cradle, I immediately underlined “All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies” and wrote “thesis of the story” because it comes off as jarring while thought-provoking. When trying to make sense of the phrase, my only reasoning he says this is because his perspective alters the events — meaning everyone has their own truth. With everyone having their own truth, the ominous third point of view is missed and the reader is confronted with the narrator’s bias. When writing and a first-person perspective, there is always a bias because we see the narrator transition his ideals and discover his new moral compass.
Additionally, I think it’s really important to consider that this quote is the first line in The Book of Bokononism. This entire book of what religion is based on can be compared to almost any other religious text that people study and worship. For instance, the Bible was written years ago and it is uncertain of the events in the Bible and if they were true or not. While there was a man named Jesus, no one knows if the Bible and the stories about Jesus actually happened. However, that does not mean that people do not find the Bible to be true to them. Most religions are often based off of “lies “because they are based on things that cannot be proven because they are based around theories of how the world started. Therefore, I think Vonnegut is using this quote as a way to comment on religion and how people’s perceptions of religion can be true and untrue at the same time.
Some of the most intriguing scenes for me were the artistic scenes of both Newt and Angela. Newt’s painting contrasts the scientific world of his father and brings with it a direct reference to the title of the novel. There are many quotable lines from this scene, starting with when Castle asks Newt if he is self-taught and Newt responds with a direct, “Isn’t everybody?” I find that this scene, along with Angela’s clarinet-playing scene, play to Vonnegut’s key purpose with the novel in conveying the meaning of life or lack thereof. Castle forces his ideas on Newt and everyone around him, ending the scene with the destruction of Newt’s art. Newt’s painting is considered again in a following chapter, prior to Angela’s unhappy marriage. Newt divulges that Angela’s husband is “mean as hell to her” to which the narrator reveals he thought the marriage was a happy one (179). We then have another reference to the title in Newt’s response, which is, “See the cat? See the cradle?” (179). While cat’s cradle is referenced multiple times throughout the text, I do find it curious that these mentionings fall before or during some of the most creative expressions of the novel.