Cat's Cradle is the fourth novel by American writer Kurt Vonnegut, first published in 1963. It explores issues of science, technology, and religion, satirizing the arms race and many other targets along the way. After turning down his original thesis, in 1971 the University of Chicago awarded Vonnegut his Master's degree in anthropology for Cat's Cradle.
Easton Press Edition
After World War II, Kurt Vonnegut worked in the public relations department for the 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. The Nobel Prize-winning chemist Irving Langmuir, who worked with Vonnegut's older brother Bernard at GE, became the model for Dr. Felix Hoenikker. Vonnegut said in an interview with The Nation that "Langmuir was absolutely indifferent to the uses that might be made of the truths he dug out of the rock and handed out to whoever was around, but any truth he found was beautiful in its own right, and he didn’t give a damn who got it next." This idea was also used by the French novelist René Barjavel in his novel Le Diable L'Emporte (1948). The novel tells how a Swiss scientist creates a new destructive weapon, "thick water" which freezes at 42 ° C. All water affected by this "thick water" is transformed into the form of water, and freezes immediately.
The title of the book derives from the string game "cat's cradle." Early in the book it is learned that Felix Hoenikker (a fictional co-inventor of the atom bomb) was playing cat's cradle when the bomb was dropped, and the game is later referenced by his son, Newton Hoenikker.
Cat's Cradle summary
At the opening of the book, the narrator, an everyman named John (a.k.a. Jonah), describes a time when he was planning to write a book about what important Americans did on the day Hiroshima was bombed. While researching this topic, John becomes involved with the children of Felix Hoenikker, a fictional Nobel laureate physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb. John travels to Ilium, New York, to interview the Hoenikker children and others for his book. In Ilium John meets, among others, Dr. Asa Breed, who was the supervisor "on paper" of Felix Hoenikker. As the novel progresses, John learns of a substance called ice-nine, created by the late Hoenikker and now secretly in the possession of his children. Ice-nine is an alternative structure of water that is solid at room temperature. When a crystal of ice-nine contacts liquid water, it becomes a seed crystal that makes the molecules of liquid water arrange themselves into the solid form, ice-nine.
John and the Hoenikker children eventually end up on the fictional Caribbean island of San Lorenzo, one of the poorest countries on Earth, where the people speak a barely comprehensible creole of English (for example "twinkle, twinkle, little star" is rendered "Tsvent-kiul, tsvent-kiul, lett-pool store"). It is ruled by the fictional dictator, "Papa" Monzano, who threatens all opposition with impalement on a giant hook.
San Lorenzo has an unusual culture and history, which John learns about while studying a guidebook lent to him by the newly-appointed US ambassador to the country. He learns about an influential religious movement in San Lorenzo, called Bokononism, a strange, postmodern faith that combines irreverent, nihilistic, and cynical observations about life and God's will with odd, but peaceful rituals (for instance, the supreme act of worship is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the bare soles of the feet of two persons, supposed to result in peace and joy between the two communicants). Though everyone on the island seems to know much about Bokononism and its founder, Bokonon, the present government calls itself Christian and those caught practising Bokononism are punished with death by the giant "hook."
As the story progresses, it becomes clear that San Lorenzon society is more bizarre and cryptic than originally revealed. In observing the interconnected lives of some of the island's most influential residents, John learns that Bokonon himself was at one point a de facto ruler of the island, along with a US Marine deserter. The two men created Bokononism as part of a utopian project to control the population. The ban was an attempt to give the religion a sense of forbidden glamour, and it is found that almost all of the residents of San Lorenzo, including the dictator, practice the faith, and executions are rare.
When John and the other travelers arrive on the island, they are greeted by President "Papa" Monzano and around five-thousand San Lorenzans. It becomes clear that "Papa" Monzano is extremely ill, and he intends to name Franklin Hoenikker his successor. Franklin, uncomfortable with this arrangement, abruptly hands the presidency to John, who grudgingly accepts.
The dictator later uses ice-nine to commit suicide rather than succumb to his inoperable cancer. Consistent with the properties of ice-nine, the dictator's corpse instantly turns into solid ice at room temperature.
During John's inauguration festivities, in which the American ambassador to San Lorenzo was going to speak, San Lorenzo's small air force was supposed to present a brief air show. One of the airplanes crashes into the dictator's seaside palace and causes his still-frozen body to tumble into the ocean, and all the water in the world's seas, rivers, and groundwater turns into ice-nine, killing almost all life in a few days.
John manages to escape with his wife, a native San Lorenzan named Mona. They later discover a mass grave where all the surviving San Lorenzans had killed themselves with ice-nine, on the facetious advice of Bokonon. Displaying a mix of grief and resigned amusement, Mona kills herself as well. John takes refuge with a few other survivors (an American couple he had met on the plane to San Lorenzo and Felix Hoenikker's two sons), and lives in a cave for several months, during which time he writes a memoir revealed to be the novel itself. The book ends by his meeting a weary Bokonon, who is contemplating what the last words of The Books of Bokonon should be. John receives inspiration from these words and the reader realizes he is planning to place his own book a "history of human stupidity" on Mt. McCabe (the highest point on the island) as a "magnificent symbol" and then die.
Cat's Cradle Characters
Dr. Asa Breed: The supervisor of Felix Hoenikker. He takes the narrator, John, around Illium and to the General Forge and Foundry Company, where the late Felix worked. Later in the tour Dr. Breed becomes upset with John for "misunderstanding what a scientist is, what a scientist does." [4]
The Narrator: A writer named John, also known as Jonah, who describes the events in the book with humorous sarcastic detail. It is when he is writing a book on the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki where he first becomes involved with the Hoenikker children. He begins the book by stating "Call me Jonah", alluding to the first line of Herman Melville's Moby Dick. In a way, John and Ishmael, the narrator for Moby Dick, share the same traits as both a protagonist and a minor character at the same time.
Felix Hoenikker: The "Father of the Atom Bomb", Felix Hoenikker was proclaimed to be one of the smartest scientists on Earth. An eccentric, emotionless man, he is depicted as amoral and apathetic towards anything other than his research, just as long as he had something to keep him busy, as in his role as one of the "Fathers of the Atomic Bomb", and in his creation of "ice-nine", something he saw as a mental puzzle (a Marine general suggested developing a substance that could freeze and compact mud so soldiers could run across it more easily) which ends up destroying life on Earth. Only moments after creating it, Felix takes a nap in his rocking chair and dies. It is the narrator's quest for biographical details about Hoenikker that provides both the background and the connecting thread between the various subsections of the story.
Emily Hoenikker: The beautiful wife of Felix Hoenikker, who died giving birth to Newt Hoenniker. According to Dr. Asa Breed, the complications at Newt's birth were the result of a pelvic injury she sustained in a car accident some time before. Breed was a lover of Emily before she got married to Felix.
Franklin "Frank" Hoenikker: The son of famed scientist Felix Hoenikker, and Major General of San Lorenzo. He is the brother of both Newt and Angela Hoenikker. He is an utterly technically-minded person, who is unable to make decisions except for giving technical advice. His main hobby is building models.
Newton "Newt" Hoenikker: The midget son of famed scientist Felix Hoenikker, and a painter. He is the brother of both Frank and Angela Hoenikker. His main hobby is painting minimalist abstract works. He briefly had an affair with a Russian midget dancer named Zinka, who turned out to be a KGB agent, sent to steal the ice-nine for the Soviet Union.
Angela Hoenikker Conners: The daughter of famed scientist Felix Hoenikker, and a clarinetist. She is the sister of both Frank and Newt Hoenikker and is married to Harrison C. Conners. In contrast to her midget brother, Angela is described as a giantess, standing almost 7 feet tall. She used to take care of her father after her mother's death, and also she's acting as a kind of mother figure to Newt. She and her brothers all have samples of ice-nine, which they found along with their father's body, dead in his chair.
Bokonon: A co-founder of San Lorenzo (along with Earl McCabe) and creator of the religion of Bokononism, which he asked McCabe to outlaw. Born as Lionel Boyd Johnson.
Earl McCabe: A co-founder of San Lorenzo and a marine deserter, who ruled San Lorenzo for many years.
Papa Monzano: The ailing dictator of San Lorenzo. He is the adopted father of Mona Monzano.
Mona Aamons Monzano: The adopted daughter of "Papa" Monzano, who marries John before dying of Ice-Nine.
Julian Castle: The multi-millionaire ex-owner of Castle Sugar Cooperation, whom John travels to San Lorenzo to interview. He abandoned his business ventures in order to set up and operate a humanitarian hospital in the jungle of San Lorenzo.
H. Lowe Crosby: A bicycle manufacturer whom John meets on a plane to San Lorenzo. His main goal is to move his factory to San Lorenzo, so he could run it with cheap workforce.
Hazel Crosby: The wife of H. Lowe Crosby, who asks all the Hoosiers she meets around the globe to call her "Mom".
Philip Castle: The son of Julian Castle, and the operator of the hotel Casa Mona on the island on San Lorenzo. He also writes a history of San Lorenzo that the narrator reads on his flight to the island. Bokonon taught both him and Mona when they were young. Through index reading of Castle's book, Claire Minton figures out that he's a homosexual.
Horlick Minton: The new American ambassador to San Lorenzo, whom John meets on a plane. He was blacklisted as a Communist sympathizer during the McCarthy-era.
Claire Minton: The wife of the new American ambassador to San Lorenzo. Index writer.
Source and additional information: Cat's Cradle
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