Deception In Cat's Cradle

Any useful religion can be based on lies. Religion is an establishment that provides communal ties, morality, and hope, even if it lacks truth. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut conveys this message through the lies of Bokonon. Bokonon provides teaching and hope to those in the underdeveloped country of San Lorenzo. He also provides the narrator with a sense of understanding about the world around him. The narrator, John, recognizes the impact and power the lies of Bokonon had on the citizens of San Lorenzo. The religion united the people of San Lorenzo but ultimately sentenced them to their death.

Science only gives facts to society and does not care about other people or their emotions. Science’s primary focus is on discovering more and more. In a discussion between the main character, John, and a woman named Sandra, John asks, “What

Science has helped improve many people’s lifestyle from eating a healthy diet to stopping different form of disease that are attacking the human body. Science also provides intolerable lifestyle to people such as the elders as when the elderly have an incurable disease and the elderly are suffering for this incurable disease and wants to die, but cannot due to science advancement in technology making impossible to die at that moment. The possible future of science is uncontrollable. The power of science provides possibility and with this possibility doesn’t always generate a good possibility. Jeremy Rifkin in "Biotech Century" and Michael Bishop in "Enemies of Promise" talks about the science as their argument in a casual sense of

Throughout history, scientific advancements have been viewed as having a positive impact on the lives of all people. No matter how large or small the discovery is, few see it as possibly having a negative effect on society. Too much time has been spent throughout history on praising scientists and their new works; however, how these advancements affected society when eventually used is often overlooked. Kurt Vonnegut attacks this ideal and provides a story that reveals how scientists do not care about how their findings could impact society in a positive or negative way. He exemplifies the importance religion can have on a population when everyone follows its scripture strictly. How a leader can have control over an entire population through

One of the main themes in Cat's Cradle is the role of religion in humanity. Throughout the novel, Vonnegut concerns himself with the idea that religion is there to counteract the hard, cold truths of science. Vonnegut shows this through the religion of Bokonon in San Lorenzo. The San Lorenzans lived in unfavorable and atrocious conditions, and since the San Lorenzan land was infertile, they had no economy to speak of which prevented them from raising their standard of living. Thus, religion became, to them, a form of escape from their lives, from the "truths," which were so difficult to bear. Telling John the story of Bokononism, Julian Castle explains, "when it became evident that no governmental or economic reform was going to make the people much less miserable, the religion became the one real instrument of hope. 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" (118). Bokonon saw there was no other way to alleviate the pain of these people's lives politically, so instead he created an escape, a play of sorts in which everyone participated, that would keep the San Lorenzans too busy to notice the bad conditions of life. Vonnegut argues that it doesn't matter if religion is true as long as it serves this purpose. As an example of this, Bokononism is a religion founded on lies, as Bokonon warns at the beginning of the Books of Bokonon: "All the true things I'm

Scientists are primarily represented by Felix Hoenikker, a childish man who cares about nothing but his experiments. His lab is full of toys, and he doesn’t seem to care about how his games affect the people around him. Hoenikker created a weapon which had the capability to kill tens of thousands in the blink of an eye. Something which could change the world and destroy it. Dr. Hoenikker only cares about his Science.

The Cat’s Cradle was written by Kurt Vonnegut and published in 1963, in the midst of the Cold War and a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis. During the nuclear age the truths of humankind’s frailty and the uselessness of their position are painfully unavoidable, as well as its collective existence under the constant threat of unfathomable power. The Cat’s Cradle materializes these fears and uncertainties, creating a complex network of feelings, underlying motifs and psychological “black holes”. What distinguishes this network from others is it’s outlandish stance on the most common of moral questions, Vonnegut juxtaposes science with religion and he characterizes science as a form of discovering truth, while he characterizes religion as a form of creating lies.

A powerful substance with the qualifications to destroy the world was granted to a spy, a ruler of a poor Caribbean country and a physicist without any precaution or concerns of how the ice-nine would be utilized. Although selfish and irresponsible, the actions of the children came from an innocent place similar to how their father’s weapons of mass destruction did. Pursuing unattainable happiness dictated their decision to barter love for science, ultimately concluding to the death of all living organisms save very few. Vonnegut proves the weakness of humans in safeguarding the perils of such massive scientific discoveries; scientists are arming an irresponsible society with the ability to slaughter millions without the ability of consequential

The scientists get entangled in the politics of the time which in turn have repercussions. Scientist

According to Vonnegut instead of scientists discovering what is beneficial to humans, they carry out research and develop profit for themselves. Vonnegut portrays scientists as greedy people. Money is what some humans live for. They live all their lives trying to get

In her piece "The Scientific State of Mind", Jane Jacobs provides her point of view that science has enhanced our relationship with the planet we inhabit. She opens her writing by refuting those who mistrust science for their own reasons. Then Jacobs then goes on to cover that science doesn't deliver happiness, but rather that it provides information needed to make progress as a culture. She continues to state that science is a state of mind, as opposed to an object. Further, she presents that science must begin with what she calls a "fruitful question", and that the scientific process comprises of four stages.

I think that science gives us a more of a reason to wonder and to be even more curious. For example, Jonah was super curious about what important Americas were doing when the first atomic bomb was dropped in Japan. Jonah realized later that what he was actually wanting to know was what was the father of the atomic bomb and his family doing that day. Once he knew what the whole family was doing on that day he wanted to know more about them not really much about the bomb anymore. Then he ended up on a huge journey that led to the end of the world and him being the dictator of this island. That’s really what happens in real life with things that we look for. When we go out looking for answers we usually find an answer to something completely different to our original question. If science were the destruction of wonder once we found the answer to our question we wouldn’t really know what to do with this information we would just have useless information. “Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.” Those people that don’t get anything out of the information they have received tend to become irritated. Many people don’t really know what to do with the information because they don’t want to believe it’s true, and sometimes that’s why people don’t want to learn anything that they aren’t comfortable with.

Religion was created to inspire and give people hope for a better life by worshiping a supernatural deity. However, in today’s society the world has manipulated and shaped the concept of religion into something other than a type of betterment of the human race. Humans are born into this world untouched, it is not until they become a certain age when they are lead into the manipulative cycle of religion. Religion has morphed from hope and explanations to an excuse for violence, an excuse for exploitation, and an excuse to ignore factual, scientific, evidence.

Science in many ways has a vast impact on our lives. Without the tools to understand key issues that science tackles we give up our ability to form our own views and contribute to the discussion on things that affect us every day.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s work Cat’s Cradle, readers are instantly drawn into the novel by the potential foreshadowing of events to come by the narrator, John. John’s ambition early-on is to develop a work titled The Day the World Ended, about the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima entailing the effects and details of the catastrophic event. For research purposes, the narrator writes to Newt Hoenikker the midget child of Felix Hoenikker, a Nobel laureate prizewinning physicist, and an early engineer of the atomic bomb. In order to gather data, John asks in his letter what Newt remembered doing the day that the bomb engulfed the city of Hiroshima. Newt, who was only six at the time of the bombing, first talks very highly of his father’s