Postmodernist features in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle
Eliska Plackova (2002)
Cat's Cradle is a book, which enables many points for
literary discussions. One possible topic of them could be
the postmodernist features in this book. In this examination
Ihab Hassan's essay "Toward a Concept of Postmodernism" was
used as a source of secondary literature for defining of
postmodernist features. The most visible and prevalent
features are postmodernist metonymy, treatment of the
character, dynamic tension, anarchy and a postmodernist look
at religion as a whole.
To put Vonnegut's Cradle into a definite time span,
let me start with a bit of personal data about the author.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born on November 11, 1922 in
Indianapolis, Indiana. Although from a wealthy family, the
Depression caused a rapid lost of their fortune. After
having no success with his study of science, Vonnegut found
pleasure in writing. Poor academic performance made him
leave the university and join the U.S. Army.
It is hard to state for sure, if his inspiration for
writing laid mostly in his genetically inherited poetical
cells or in his life experience. When we look at his
father's occupation, we find nothing striking that would
have something in common with writing. His father was an
architect. So let's have a look at his mother. She had
a long history of mental instability and consequently
committed a suicide. As well known, in each talented writer
is a piece of insanity. After taking into account
Vonnegut's science fiction themes, we can lead discussions
about this connection to his mother's sanity. Some inherited
features can be seen, if we take into consideration, that in
1984 Vonnegut attempted to commit suicide as well, for which
he blamed his mother's example.
Vonnegut's war experience left clear marks on his
writing and in the book Cat's Cradle as well. As a direct
witness of the bombing of Dresden, Vonnegut was left with
unforgettable memories. The scene of senseless misery and
mass destruction at Dresden played an important role in
forming Vonnegut's intellect and pacifist views. Just as
Petr Zelenka in his book about Vonnegut's new religion says:
"Vonnegut, as a fantastic moralist, cynical pacifist, holy
atheist, anti-intellectual philosopher, a pocalyptic
futurist and bitter humorist, covered all these paradoxes of
our time."
After studying anthropology, Vonnegut worked for
General Electric and was forced to continue writing short
stories in order to make living for his family. Because of
the low wages there, Vonnegut found a job as a teacher of
English in Rhode Island, where he wrote many of his short
novels. Vonnegut became a science fiction writer, although
not very pleased by this label. As the author himself says,
his novels were directed for the people who like to spend
long evenings with a pleasing novel or short story. The
novels were for the people of such times, when there were no
TV, movies or radio. They were for the people, who were
relaxing with a magazine in their hand.(HN Víkend)
The best description of America at that time is to be
found in Lundguist's book Kurt Vonnegut, where he quotes
Vonnegut's words:
America was an idealistic, pacifistic nation at the
time. I was taught in the sixth grade to be proud
that we had a standing army of just over a hundred
thousand men and that generals had nothing to say
about what was done in Washington. I was taught to
be proud of that and to pity Europe for having more
than a million men under arms and spending all
their money on airplanes and tanks. I simply never
unlearned junior civics. I still believe in it.
I got a very good grade (Lundquist 2-3).
In an essay by McDowell we even find a very
interesting comparison of Vonnegut's writing and Hitchcock.
" In fact, in each of his novels there is at least one
character from his native region. This can be compared to
director Alfred Hitchcock's practice of self cameos on
screen." It is true, that we can find some parallels between
Vonnegut's books and his life. The book Cat's Cradle is no
exception. The Hoenikker family of the novel, consists of an
elder son, middle daughter and the youngest child is a boy,
just the same as in Vonnegut's own family. Another parallel
can be seen in connection with Vonnegut's mother. His mother
committed suicide, when he was twenty-two years old and in
many of his novels the character of the mother is dead.
But let's focus on the book Cat's Cradle itself. This
book was written in 1963. The second title of the book,
which is, "The Day the World Ended" can attract the reader
immediately.
John, a writer, is the fictional author of a book,
which he calls "The Day the World Ended." He decides to
write about Felix Hoenikker, one of the creators of the
atomic bomb and his family on the day when the bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima. In his research, John gets in touch
with Newt Hoenikker, the youngest, midget son of Felix
Hoenikker. Newt writes letters to John and tells him about
his brother Frank and sister Angela. Newt also describes the
day when the bomb was dropped, the day when his father went
to play with him and scared him with his ugly face. The
Cat's Cradle was a string game, which Felix was playing that
morning. The whole family is very strange. Newt is a midget.
From his early youth, Frank loved to play with bugs and
ants, and Angela, a six-foot tall unattractive woman,
believed her father was an unappreciated saint. John becomes
involved with these people and learns about Felix's latest
invention - ice-nine. Ice-nine can turn water to ice. After
Felix's death, his ch ildren divided this ice-nine among
themselves and each of them used it in a quite peculiar way.
John's research takes him closer and closer to this
invention. John's work takes him to the republic of San
Lorenzo, where the whole story finds its climax.
Postmodernist features can be found through out the
whole novel. Ihab Hassan in his essay Toward a Concept of
Postmodernism defines Postmodernism as:
* Paraphysics/Dadaism * Antiform (disjunctive, open)
* Play * Chance
* Anarchy * Exhaustion/silence
* Performance/Happening * Participation
* Decreation/Deconstruction * Antithesis
* Absence * Dispersal
* Text/Intertext * Rhetoric
* Syntagm * Parataxis
* Metonymy * Combination
* Rhizome/Surface * Against Interpretation
* Misreading * Signifier
* Idiolect * Desire
* Mutant * Polymorphous
* Schizophrenia * Difference-Differance/Trace
* The Holy Ghost * Irony
* Indeterminacy * Immanence
Individual chapters, and their compositions express
the postmodernist metonymy. Their succession and titles are
rather unusual for a novel. Chapters are short and with
describing titles such as: "A Nice Midget; O.K., Mom; No
Pain; Communists, Nazis, Royalists, Parachutists, and Draft
Dodgers…" The factual metonymy can be seen in the Cat's
Cradle as well. The complicated structure of the Cat's
Cradle in the form of string parallels the structure of the
atom bomb. Hoenikker himself connects both , when he plays
Cat's Cradle on the day that his invention is used.
The main narrator of the book differs from his
modernist predecessors and regular heroes already in his
name and treatment of his character. The first sentence of
the book tells us: "Call me Jonah." (7) This name could be
easily connected with the biblical Jonah, who was swallowed
by a giant whale on the way to Ninive. The name Jonah does
not have only biblical connotations though; it refers also
to the Melville's Moby Dick. Peter Reed in his book about
Vonnegut writes about this point: "It is characteristic
that Vonnegut's speaker should be a Jonah, who… gets
swallowed by the whale, rather than a whale-hunting
Ishmael." This opinion is understandable, when we take into
consideration, that Jonah from Cat's Cradle was not hunting
any whale, which could be represented by Bokononism. On the
contrary, he readily accepted this religion and in the end
was completely swallowed by these "harmful lies", just like
Jonah by the whale in the biblical story.
The playfulness is clear from the title of the book.
The Cat's Cradle is a game with a loop of string. The Cat's
Cradle was actually one of the figures made with the string.
Felix Hoenikker, the "father" of the atom bomb and
father of the three children played this game on the day
when the atom bomb was dropped. He never played with his
children, almost never spoke to them, but he played on this
fatal day. There are no shocking visions described in
connection to this day, just a children's game, which eases
the atmosphere of that day. Even Hoenikker's lab looks like
a child's room. It is filled with things such as a kite with
a broken spine, a bubble pipe, or a fi sh bowl. This
eccentric scientist was always absorbed in thoughts, which
resembled children's questions like: "I wonder about
turtles. When they pull in their heads, do their spines
buckle or contract?" (15) Hoenikker's second invention,
Ice-nine, is actually a game as well. The typical role of
a scientist is switched here. He plays with it in his
kitchen and cooks it in a pan.
The role of this Ice-nine is the same as inventions in
books of Jules Verne or Karel Čapek, all of these write
about some invention, which destroys the world.
The title of the book brings us to an even closer look
at the matter. Why "Cat's in the Cradle"? The cat can be
found in the Cradle only when children play with the cat and
put it there. So as we can see, it is again just
a children's game applied to the world's destiny.
Even the dialect at San Lorenzo is like a child's
speech. John writes about this dialect: "The dialect of San
Lorenzo is both easy to understand and difficult to write
down." (71) Bokonon's poems are like children's rhymes. The
rebirth of Bokonon is described in rhymes as well:
"Be like a baby,
The Bible say,
So I stay like a baby
To this very day." (70)
The different postmodernist points of view are seen on
the presentation of Newt's painting. He likes painting, even
though his paintings resemble children's doodles rather than
real paintings. Here we see the inclination towards play,
anarchy (in terms of its chaotic drawings) and
deconstruction.
The postmodernist dynamic tension is represented by
visible symbolism throughout the work. Science and
technology in the palace at San Lorenzo are opposed to
Bokonon, jungle and religion. Just as the opposites of good
and evil, Satan and Saint. Bokonon in one of his Calypsos
says about this dynamic tension:
"Papa" Monzano, he's so very bad
But without bad "Papa" I would be so sad,
Because without "Papa's" badness,
Tell me, if you would,
How could wicked old Bokonon
Ever, ever look good?"
Postmodernism does not prefer any pole of this
tension. It acknowledges the variety of counterparts, views,
there is the ability of toleration because the "absolute
sense does not exist". (Book of Bokonon)
When talking about Bokonon, the whole Bokononism is
a kind of postmodernist religion. The ending - ism itself
refers to the thesis, which all these -isms claim,
(capitalism, communism, socialism…) and that is: that only
their -ism is the right one for the world. The founder of
Bokononism was Lionel Boyd Johnson, whose name was corrupted
by the island dialect. Bokononism contains the postmodernist
misreading, combination and anarchy at once. Even the first
verse in the Book of Bokonons says: "All of the true things
that I am to tell you are shameless lies." Here we can see
Vonnegut's opinion about religion. He tells us, that people
always look for something to what they can believe. "Truth
was the enemy of the people, because the truth was so
terrible, so Bokonon made it his business to provide the
people with better and better lies." The religion just
covers the horrible truths out there. Bokononism is like
a play. All the people are actors, which are fed with lies
and like in a Christianity or other religions, they don't
question it, they just blindly follow it. They believe in
their made up religion, they believe in something which is
not. Like Cat's Cradle, which for some people is just
a bunch of strings, for some a real image of a Cradle. The
crisis of Christianity (religion) is according to Vonnegut:
"The adults can not regard themselves as God's little sheep
anymore." In another interview he says: "We can not believe
in Christianity anymore, we know too much about the world."
(Zelenka, 87) This a postmodernist feature, which is typical
for many postmodernist books. The main faith is not based in
some religion, but in man himself. Vonnegut states a very
original opinion about God's creation: "Whoever writes about
other humans, and creates their pains, loves, sorrows and
passions, he tastes personally the process of God's creation
and for these characters he becomes a God himself."
(Zelenka, 89) Even Felix Hoenikker was described as person
so innocent, that he was pract ically a Jesus. The essay
"Understanding Religion Through Cat's Cradle" presents
further analysis of Jesus and Christianity. "Once the
comparison is made it is surprisingly relevant in that Jesus
created a religion that would, over time, cause hundreds of
thousands of deaths also." (3) An open critique of the
Catholic Church is included in one of the Calypsos as well:
On the Natives of San Lorenzo:
Oh, a very sorry people, yes,
Did I find here.
Oh, they had no music,
And they had no beer.
And, oh, everywhere
Where they tried to perch
Belonged to Castle Sugar, Incorporated,
Or the Catholic church.
The Book of Bokonon mentioned in Cat's Cradle is not
complete, we can get some overall idea of it though. The
Books number 1, 6, &, and 14 are mentioned, then the
Calypsos (poems, riddles), and various separate verses,
stories and autobiographical sections about Bokonon are
included. In the Seventh Book, which is about Bokonon's
Republic, we find again some parallel to a game: "Let us
start our Republic with a chain of drug stores, a chain of
grocery stores, a chain of gas chambers, and a nati onal
game. After that we can write our Constitution." The
postmodernist composition of these "Books" is visible on
every line. The postmodernist antiform, with all its
disjunctiveness, and open form of verses and intertext is
intertwined throughout the whole of Cat's Cradle. For
example the Fourteenth Book of Bokonon, which is a short
book with a long title:
Title: What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind of
Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?
Only verse: Nothing
Complete anarchy is seen in the Bokonons verses and
opinions. The innovation and new ideas spring from all his
sayings: "Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no
remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy
anything." Even the invention of foma, which are lies,
harmless untruths or as in the online Dictionary of Terms
from the Books of Bokonon called "a useful and harmless sort
of horseshit" are a kind of new religion, an innovative
interpretation of a new look at the way of our living.
As we can see, the whole book is full of a very
distinctive humor, anarchic view of religion and history as
well. The world is according to Vonnegut based on these
Bokonon's quotations:
"God never wrote a good play in his life.
History! Read it and weep!"
And another harmless attack on religion "Of course
it's trash!"
But the book is also full of "frail human beings, who are
simply incapable of the moral strength and wisdom demanded
of them, but this makes the satire even more powerful:
Mankind continually refuses to acknowledge what may be
called its terminal stupidity and therefore perpetually
threatens its own existence." (Synopsis, Cat's Cradle)
At the end of this analysis we can see, that Vonnegut
is an author of this postmodernist culture, which embraces
to all problems of our society. He addresses the generation,
which finds pleasure in parody on humans' stupidity, our
deepest convictions and beliefs. All this he masterly
manages with his superb humor and inventive style, despite
the fact, that many of the themes are not optimistic about
human fate at all. Vonnegut's partly autobiographic book
Cat's Cradle is full of playfulness, s triking oppositions
and metonymical comparisons. On a presentation of made up
religion he shows human stupidity and blind faith, which we
need for our lives, which we need, to give our lives some
meaning. After thorough consideration, we might come to the
conclusion, that Bokonon himself best expresses the
possibility of our own destruction, blind belief, and human
history:
Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end,
And our God will take things back that He to us did lend.
And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God,
Why just go ahead and scold Him. He'll just smile and nod.
Bibliography:
Hasan, Ihab. "Toward a Concept of Postmodernism." The
Disemberment of Orpheus: Towards a Postmodern Literature.
Princeton,1982.
Reed, Peter, J. Kurt Vonnegut. New York: Warner Books, 1972.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat's Cradle. London: Penguin Books, 1965.
Zelenka, Petr. Zelenka, Petr. Nové náboženství Kurta
Vonneguta. Jinočany: H&H, 1992.
http://www.cs.uni.edu/%7Ewallingf/personal/bokonon.html
16.3.2002 (The Books of Bokonon)
http://geocities.datacellar.net/Hollywood/4953/kv_life.html
16.3.2002 („A life worth living" essay by Nick McDowell)
www.duke.edu/~crh4/vonnegut/catscradle/cats_magill.html
16.3.2002 (Synopsis: Cat´s Cradle)
http://geocities.datacellar.net/Hollywood/4953/kv_religion.html
16.3.2002 („Understanding Religion Through Cat's Cradle"
essay by Liana Price)
http://home.eduhi.at/user/tw/vonnegut/vnetlnk.htm
16.3.2002 (Vonnegut´s life)
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/catscradle
25.11.2001 (Vonnegut´s life)
"Když povídka byla králem." HN Víkend 2.November. 2001,
natl.ed.: 21.
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Last modified: June 11, 2002