Cat's Cradle

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut is a satirical novel portraying tension between two main ideas: science and religion. Science and religion have always been to extremely conflicting things today in our world. People have always questioned to what extent which is true or right. Most people have found a happy medium between the two, but there are others that take each idea to the extreme. Vonnegut, however, reflects a totally different idea. On the island of San Lorenzo, both religion and science are important to the people and leaders of the country. Bokonism, "a religion of lies", is the belief of virtually everyone. Everyone believes in these lies even when they know what they are. However, in the town of Illium people take religious concepts and try to justify the meaning with science. For example, the meaning in life being related to protein (???). To me, Bokonism and trying to find meaning of things through science is Kurt Vonnegut's social commentary on his view of religion. Something tells me that he believes that religion is made up of some lies and has no meaning at times. It portrays the main idea of the novel, which is that many things in our life are based upon lies, and it is at times impossible to find meaning in them.

"To whom it may concern: These people around you are almost all of the survivors on San Lorenzo of the winds that followed the freezing of the sea. These people made a captive of the spurious holy man named Bokonon. They brought him here, placed him at their center, and commanded him to tell them exactly what God Almighty was up to and what they should now do. The mountebank told them, possible because He was through with them, and that they should have the good manners to die. This, as you can see, they did" (182).

I found this passage a very powerful one. John and Mona find many survivors frozen, with their fingers to their mouths. They find this note from Bokonon, stating what he told the people and how they immediately obeyed. This shows how so many people view their faith with such importance, and I could not believe that so many would die because they thought that God had meant them to. This obviously serves as social commentary by Vonnegut, showing his views in religion based upon lies.

I had many mixed feelings about this novel. I found it difficult to follow at first, with the switching of events and so many different characters. However, I think it was written brilliantly. Vonnegut adds so much imagination to this novel, creating Bokonon and the Book of Bokonism containing many poems and views of that religion, making so many different words pertaining to Bokonism such as karass, wampeter, sin-wat, etc, and the deadly weapon of ice-nine. To create an entire religion in a novel as well as an item to end the world really added to the book, and I commend Vonnegut for that.

I also enjoyed the end of the book. The end of the world came in an accident; Papa's body falling into the ocean destroyed mankind. Such a significant event such as the end of the world happened so quickly and in a way that is so insignificant. This adds to the idea of how the arms race really is dangerous, and that when something like ice-nine is found we have to be extremely careful. The ending of the book was so disastrous, yet it added to the meaning so well that it made the novel so much better. I would say that Cat's Cradle is a great novel once you finish it and reflect upon the things that I just did. It was so well written and had the perfect ending to prove one of Vonnegut's many points.