“The first sentence in The Books of Bokonon is: ‘All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies'” (5). This embodies the nature of Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut’s ridiculous collage of satire and black humor. Vonnegut, like the fictional holy man Bokonon, spins a tale of his ideals and convictions sarcastically, by stating the obvious opposite to the truth. The novel begins with John, a man journeying away from his primary occupation of writing a “Christian book” about the first Atomic bomb, and ends at his death, at the end of the world. Every amusing stumble and revelation that occurs between opens a new door for Vonnegut, behind which is an established institution he is eager to invite the world to criticize. Vonnegut’s purpose in writing Cat’s Cradle was not to romanticize or fictionalize the events surrounding the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, but instead was to use those events to shamelessly ridicule the world’s flawed religious, political, and scientific institutions.
Religion, as a collective philosophical institution, is one of the primary targets in Vonnegut’s sarcastic crosshairs. Vonnegut invents the brazenly nonsensical cult of Bokononism, a religion based on lies which urges its practitioners to be blissfully happy, accepting misfortune as fate. John, the protagonist, has recently discovered the joys of Bokononism and, to create a sense of mystifying disorientation, Vonnegut introduces John’s newfound religion amid a slew of ridiculous terms and rationalized definitions, intended, surely, to prompt the reader to dismiss this overly complex, convoluted religious concept: “[This discussion] brings me to the Bokononist concept of a wampeter. A wampeter is the pivot of a karass. No karass is without a wampeter, Bokonon tells us, just as no wheel is without a hub” (52). Though John’s righteous religious message grows tedious and befuddling, there are notes in its delivery which ring true – not with John’s design of enlightenment, but with Vonnegut’s biting interpretation of the evangelical religious zealot. Haven’t we all met someone who, recently making a discovery, was so long-winded in sharing it that nobody cared to listen? This is Vonnegut’s point: that religion is tired, overly complex, and much too elaborate to have anything to do with life’s true purpose. He asserts, through John’s annoying born-again diatribe, that religion has been reduced to nothing more than a social diversion, a hobby, a mild fascination. Religions are so varied and loosely defined that nowadays everyone can be a messiah, even if nobody will commit to their worship. Possibly the most interesting and perplexing convention devised by Vonnegut in his satirical war against weightless religious conviction is the Bokononist concept of the ‘granfalloon.’ A granfalloon is a perceived link between people that doesn’t really exist. As John uses it, a granfalloon is when people who own the same car or graduated the same academy assume that they are linked, though their lives have never intersected (91-92). However, the concept of the granfalloon enjoys a double significance, as Vonnegut expects the reader to reason that the concept, when applied to any religion, even Bokononism, destroys the institution to its core. To claim “I am a Christian,” or to suggest, “We have a lot in common because we are both Jewish,” is, according to Vonnegut’s concept of the granfalloon, as ludicrous as hinting that all left-handed people are subconsciously linked, or that clinging to a specific ideology, like Christianity, makes you instantly part of a special community. While some may argue that religions and ideologies are truly globally unifying factors, it is hard to accept that all people who claim to be Christian are really focused on the same goals. This, according to Bokononism, means that Christians are a group lacking a common wampeter, which means that they do not compose a true karass, but instead comprise a hollow granfalloon.
Vonnegut pokes fun at prophets and makes the faithful look foolish, but his sarcasm does not stop before a parody of politics. Vonnegut makes a joke of heroism and a farce of all military and political enterprises. Though the book initially centers on the science and bureaucracy surrounding the Atomic bomb, the true meat of the satire lies on the tiny island of San Lorenzo, where Vonnegut’s primary military jab lies in The Day of the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy, San Lorenzo’s “greatest national holiday.” John arrives on San Lorenzo one day before the holiday, and, knowing only that it commemorates something honorable during WWII, inquires about the martyrs:
I asked the driver who the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy had been… [He] told me that San Lorenzo had declared war on Germany and Japan an hour after Pearl Harbor was attacked. San Lorenzo conscripted a hundred men to fight on the side of democracy. These hundred men were put on a ship bound for the United States, where they were to be armed and trained. The ship was sunk by a German submarine right outside of Bolivar harbor (149).
Vonnegut masters the art of dark comedy and unlikely hilarity with this anecdote alone. The “greatest national holiday” of San Lorenzo commemorates a startling and depressing military defeat, and the horribly hilarious part is that San Lorenzo’s great contribution to the war for democracy was one hundred untrained, unarmed, conscripted soldiers. It’s all at once hilarious and horrible, but it serves Vonnegut’s purpose, which is to satirize the military by pointing out the futility and inevitable wastefulness of military effort. The emotionally devastating part, crafted expertly by Vonnegut, is the enraptured hope with which the citizens of San Lorenzo view this fateful day. They innocently celebrate what amounts to no more than a massacre, suggesting that all militarily involved nations are naïve to turn an amorous eye to their mistakes. San Lorenzo has other weaknesses which Vonnegut jumps to exploit, specifically its unstable political environment. Every citizen of San Lorenzo is a devout practitioner of Bokononism, and it is against the teachings of Bokonon to desire to rise above your position in society. This is a wonderful ideal, but when the president of San Lorenzo dies, nobody wants to take the job because of Bokononism, and so John, a newcomer to the island, is offered the post: “Come on. Be President of San Lorenzo. You’d be real good at it, with your personality. Please?” (201). Vonnegut uses the situation not to mock the failing political climate of San Lorenzo, but to comment on the nature of political corruption. In a society where nobody is greedy and nobody is corrupt, like San Lorenzo, nobody wants to be a politician, even if doing so means that they’ll be wealthy and powerful. In this ideologically perfect society, there is no desire to dominate other people, and future leaders must be cajoled and tempted into their posts. The contemporary and satirical significance of this conviction is that all politicians desire to be wealthy and powerful, and that their government positions are simply masks for their need to control and dominate other people.
Vonnegut deals plenty of blows to organized government, but he also satirizes one of the modern military’s favorite tools: science. Vonnegut makes a playful cartoon of Dr. Hoenikker, the ‘father’ of the Atomic bomb. While John is researching his book on the Bomb, he corresponds with Newt, Hoenikker’s youngest son. Newt remembers the events leading up to the bomb’s invention, and shares an anecdote about his father’s short attention span and absent-mindedness:
I remember one morning when the oil burner had quit, the pipes were frozen, and the car wouldn’t start. We all sat there… while [my sister] Angela kept pushing the starter until the battery was dead. And then father spoke up…. He said, “I wonder about turtles.” “What do you wonder about turtles?” Angela asked him. “When they pull their heads in, do their spines buckle, or contract?” After the turtle incident, father got so interested in turtles that he stopped working on the bomb. Some people from the Manhattan project finally came out to the house to ask Angela what to do. She told them to take away Father’s turtles… [He] never said a word about the disappearance of the turtles. He just came to work the next day and looked for things to play with… and everything there was to play with… had something to do with the bomb (16).
This is Vonnegut’s interpretation of scientists: that they are extraordinarily brilliant and inquisitive, but that they are unfocused and flighty, unreliable in group projects. Hoenikker’s character is foolish and unsociable, even his own children seem not to know him. While Hoenokker’s personality may be childish and uncertain, his projects are frightfully sophisticated. John learns that a man in charge of the Marine Corps weaponry visited Hoenikker before his death demanding that Hoenikker devise a tool to save the Marines from long treks through mud. Unfazed by the outlandishness of the request, Hoenikker quickly theorizes about a compound that can train water to crystallize a new way, with a higher melting point. He calls this compound ice nine. A marine could, hypothetically, place a bit of the compound into the mud, and all of the mud would instantly solidify into ice nine, creating a solid walking surface for the marines. The frightening (and fateful) part of this theory is that the ice nine would train all the moisture it came in contact with to solidify into ice nine, thus a tiny bit of ice nine in a puddle would eventually freeze the groundwater beneath it, and eventually freeze all of the water in the entire world (48-49). The scientist who relates this principle to John seems unfazed by the harrowing possibilities associated with the compound, and this is Vonnegut’s concern. With scientists as unfocused and childish as he asserts they are, what business do they have creating compounds that could, potentially, kill everyone on the planet? Vonnegut presents the sarcastic extreme of ice nine to drive home a very simple point: that we place our lives in the hands of men like Hoenikker on a daily basis. One might argue that ice nine is an impossible theory, that such a devastating tool could never be created. However, when one recalls the original focus of John’s story, a book about the effects of the Atom bomb, they see that the theory of ice nine, and Vonnegut’s point, is not terribly far from the truth. Science created a bomb that wiped out entire cities and left radioactive fallout for generations. Vonnegut’s style is satirical, but his message is concrete. Science has dangerous potential when not treated with the utmost respect, and when used frivolously, to keep marines out of mud, for instance, it can have devastating repercussions.
Kurt Vonnegut is a mastermind of literature, commanding every nuance of satire and ridicule to drive his message home in a backwards fashion. No institution is safe from Vonnegut’s vicious conviction. He lampoons religion, government, and science through his innocent, foolish characters, and creates impossible situations which nevertheless make readers think. Vonnegut paints a disheartening picture of our world at its worst, but invites us to laugh with him at the absurdity of it all.
Works Cited
Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat’s Cradle. New York: Dell Publishing, 1998.
