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.