Response to Book Report #2 - Question #2

Kurt Vonnegut's strongest technique is his satire. Cat's Cradle is a satirical cornucopia, which seems to demonstrate throughout that everything people do is futile, whether it be for better or for worse. You can see this idea is foreshadowed by the way "Jonah" suggests that his name is trivial and unimportant. "Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John." (page 1)

Jonah is a follower of Bokonon, who writes many parables, and psalms in his books. The first parable in Cat's Cradle describes a woman who claims to understand God and His ways of working perfectly. She fires him for making light of this claim. "She believed that God liked people in sailboats much better than those in motorboats. she couldn't bear to look at a worm. When she saw a worm she screamed. she was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is doing."(page 5) As Jonah pursues the creation of his book, he meets many people and every one of them is portreyed to have a major character flaw. Whether it be apathy, failure, or ignorance, Jonah eventually learns why they are terribly mistaken in their endeavors or beliefs.

My favorite quote from the story describes how the protagonist feels about all the research that people work so hard to accumulate in the world. "Beware the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of Murderous resentment for people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way." (page 281) The whole story is a collection of stories about people who work hard for nothing, and unethical people who are handed fortunes and power. In the end, everyone in the world dies and nobody is rewarded for their integrity or saved by their money and power. This brilliantly cynical story is saturated with a dark humor that I really got a kick out of.

Response to: Book Report #2 - Question #1

The most important event in Cat's Cradle is when the Marine General tells Dr. Felix Hoenicker to make something convenient and portable that will get the marines out of the mud. The brilliant Felix faced with this query, invents a secret substance known only as ice nine.
Ice nine becomes the "wampeter"of Jonah's story. (A wampeter is an object, person, idea, or activity about which a group of fate connected people revolve.) The reason why this Wampeter is so important to the story is because it kills the planet at the climax of the story. Nobody knew that Felix ever invented it, because his boss believed it was just an idea. However, his three children found it the night he died. The threesome split up the ice nine into 3 specimens and disposed of the rest of it. The oldest son Frank gives his sample to a crazy dictator who eats the shard on his death bed. Due to an unfortunate chain of events, his frozen body came in contact with the ocean, raising the melting point of all the water on earth to 114.4 Fahrenheit and ending almost all human life immediately and the rest of it shortly thereafter. Jonah's book, titled: The Day the World Ended, is intended to be a documentary on the day they bombed Hiroshima, and the events leading up to it. Ironically, thanks to the Marine General who pestered Dr. Hoenicker at lunch one day, Jonah's book becomes an actual documentary of the day the world ends, and the events preceding.


*Kurt Vonnegut is a magnificent author and I thoroughly enjoyed his sense of humor throughout this story.

A Separate Peace

First off, I am not sure if this is late, or how late it is. After reading A Separate Peace I noticed some similarities with it and another book in the same time period. The Diary of Anne Frank is really similar in the format of this story. A Separate Peace has kind of the same format because there is a flashback to when the characters were young. Sadly, Anne Frank was found out in the other story and was captured by the Nazi's that the Americans were fighting. I also felt that in the beginning of the book that Devon was based in England. I don't know why I thought that now. Overall, I thought that the book A Separate Peace was a pretty good and that it was much easier to follow than Huck Finn. I think that this is partially based on when each of the books was written and where the authors were from. What do the rest of you guys think about this book?

Win Or Lose

"No one was going to win or lose after all." (page 154)

There is no win or lose in life. You can especially see that in this novel. All that the guys could do was to work with what they were given, each in their own way.

Finny welcomed life with open arms and relished every opportunity to live, even after he was injured and was put on the side lines. Gene lived through Finny in his shadow. Even after Finny's death, Gene couldn't stand on his own two feet. Then there's Leper who lived a timid and lonely lifestyle. He then suddenly tried to change and face life head-on by being the first to enlist, but he ended up cracking under the pressure. Quackenbush had his future planned out step-by-step, and he stuck to that plan.

These young men each had their unique approaches to living life. In the real world, there is now grade: pass or fail. There are only the choices in your life that determine how you life out your life.

If...

Like everyone else I really enjoyed this book. I didn't think I would like it , but I was pleasantly surprised. I think the characters were very easy to connect with. I found this book so much easier to read then Huck Finn.
I don't know about everyone else but I always ask, "what if..." when I read. In this book I couldn't help but notice we heard everything from Gene's point of view. What if the book was told by Finny? That question makes me think of more... like did Finny know from the beginning that Gene was the reason he fell? What if the story of Gene and Finny was told through some like Leper? I might be the only one who does this but wouldn't the story be completely different if it was told by another person? I personally felt that I connected most with Gene, but what if that is only because I got to read his thoughts and not another characters...
All these questions really make you think, eh?
Well what I guess what I'm really trying to ask is, if this book was told through another character (it doesn't have to be anyone important) who would it be and how do you think it would change the story line or theme of the book?

Live Out Loud

One of my greatest reactions to the book was to how Phineas lived his life. I really loved his sense of adventure and not wanting to waste any opportunities in life.

There is so much about him to admire. He put others before himself, greatly excelled but was humble, was very sincere, looked for the best in everyone, wanted to right any wrong he felt he had done someone, and wasn't afraid to bend, or flat out break, the rules to live for the moment and do whatever seemed most fulfilling.

I believe that Finny lived his life in a way that we, or at least I, would call "living out loud" or "living to the fullest."

He lived so freely, as well as having a joy for simply being alive.

I guess the way he lived struck me so much because it made me wonder what my life would look like if I lived more like him. Which in turn lead me to wonder what it'd look like if we all lived more like Finny. Would we be more honest with each other? Treat each other better? Appreciate life more? Take more risks?

If nothing else, I think we'd at least have more stories to tell!

So, I mean, what do you think? What did you find most appealing about Finny's character, or what do you think it would be like if we lived a little bit more like he did and really live out loud?

Nothing Endures.

Reading this book was ok. I liked in a different sort of way…. However, if any of you are like me, and you always look around a book’s cover for a synopsis of some sort of the book, you were bound to look at the back cover and find the quote:

Nothing endures,
Not a tree,
Not love,
Not even a death by violence.

This quote made me think what in the story was being an allusion to these things. I pondered the fact that nothing can endure, and why those three things were chosen to exemplify. This is what I came up with:

A tree can’t endure. All living things die. However, I think it’s also referring to the tree in which held the pact of the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session. The tree which so many teen boys jumped off of; the tree which Finny was jostled out of by Gene; the tree which ultimately brought out the truth and started the end. Now that it was all in the past of Gene Forrester, he should consider it gone, unimportant. It did not endure time passed in his mind. Right?

Love cannot endure. How could it? People die, and your love for them will fade. Your emotions leave. Finny is gone, any friendship will not prosper; love cannot flourish after you proved that you can destroy it. Your love will ultimately die. Right?

Death by violence is tragic. The war was powerfully violent. Many died. But the pain will subside, the people will forget the tragedies, and new generations will be born. If it is believed that Gene did kill Finny in a subtle act of hidden violence and through a string of events, it will be eventually forgotten. The pain will be gone from the dead, the loved ones should heal, and the killer will go on, and the wrong will be forgotten, lost among the countless moments in history. It does not endure. Right?

I know some of this isn’t true. From my view, most all of it is false. A tree will last in memories, and live on. Love will always be present, unbroken, even if it seems to be torn away. A death by violence will always be there, no matter who remembers it or takes notice. However, this might be what Gene believed after being so affected by what happened during his last years at Devon. I don’t remember if this quote was in the book or not, or if it was in it, if it was thought by Gene. It just seems like the logical way to trace it.

Do you agree with my take on this quote, or any of the conclusions I made? I admit I’m not the best at voicing my thoughts, but this is what I came up with. Time to be opinionated, folks. Tell me what you think. :]