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Cat's Cradle Analysis

Decent Essays

Cat’s Cradle is a story of the interweaving tendrils of fate, of the world and the people in the play of life, just as a cat’s cradle is the interweaving of strings—they both make purpose of something usually devoid of meaning. What meaning can an object have when it is untrue to its core; as Newt points out, a cat’s cradle has “no damn cat, and no damn cradle” (Vonnegut 166). This façade of image is a recurring idea in the book; applying to the fictional religion built on lies, the way of life on San Lorenzo, and the idea of love in the books. While many ideas are obviously connected to the idea of a false image with the cat’s cradle, this concept applies to the topic of science as well. Science, which is whole-heartedly encouraged by all but a few characters, is seen to be the greatest source of knowledge in the fictional world which Kurt Vonnegut has created with San Lorenzo and ice-nine, so it is also the greatest source of ignorance in the books. Asa …show more content…

Vonnegut expresses his grim humor through his development of the science in Cat’s Cradle “because most of his novels … transform scattershot science into absurd, or ironic science” (Karon 107). Vonnegut likes to take interesting ideas from science and turn them into the driving factor of the plot’s in his writing. Science is a thing of interest for Vonnegut, so his stories, despite potentially large holes in scientific fact, are concerned with the advancement and breadth of knowledge science has, as well as, the morals that come with science. Vonnegut was interested in science, but ultimately chose words over beakers for his line of work, so what he lacks in the scientific fact he makes up for with his smithy of words; “In the ultimate analysis of Vonnegut’s science, we must inevitably draw back to his use of language. After all, he is not a physicist, or a mathematician; he is a wordsmith” (Karon

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