As with other Kurt Vonnegut’s books, I have a nagging feeling I am missing some insightful hidden meaning. There is a lot happening in this book- apocalyptic science fiction, a made up religion, familial workings of a reclusive scientist and dry humor.
Our narrator, Jonah sets out to write about the day America dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not what it was like in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but what it was like to be an American. Jonah searches for and finds the children of Felix Hoenekker, a fictional co-inventor of the atomic bomb.
Hoenekker has been dead for years. However, his children, Frank, Angela, and Newt are very much alive and in possession of a chemical weapon, Ice-9. He accompanies the siblings, Angela and Newt to the island of San Lorenzo to meet older brother Frank.
“Anyone unable to understand how useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.”
In this intellectual satire, Vonnegut explores/mocks such themes as- deadly weapons of mass destruction and religion. A fictional chemical weapon, Ice-9, brings to light Vonnegut’s foreboding about the recklessness of deadly weapons. The author even goes so far as to make up a religion- Bokononism, to mock the principles of organized religion. In establishing the tenets of Bokononism, Vonnegut exposes how most religions are based on lies, necessary lies.
Cat’s Cradle has a discontinuous tempo to it, which bothered me at first. In reading Vonnegut’s other work I gathered this is his signature style. Insightful observations served on a platter of irreverence. Irreverence to traditional literary rules.
Book Broad 