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.