Kurt Vonnegut’s Novel Cat’s Cradle Essay

The story ‘The Cradle Will Fall’ is a very intense story with lots of twist and turns.

In “Harrison Bergeron,” mankind has created a different kind of torture for humans they have created handicaps that create loud noise to stop them from thinking too deeply and weights to slow him down and masks to make people uglier. “. . . had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. . . every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking advantage of their brains” (14-17). This technology made life miserable and dull and caused people to become oblivious to problems in their lives The author makes this story to tell his readers that being equal is not necessarily a good thing. The technology of the future is dangerous if treated without care or given to the wrong people. The authors both give warnings about the future and how we must be careful with technology and how being equal is not always good.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut was written in 1963. "It is a satirical commentary on modern man and his madness" (back cover). It is a book that counters almost every aspect of our society. As well as satire, Vonnegut also includes apocalyptic elements in this novel.

"All the things I am about to tell you are shameless lies." So begins the Books of Bokonon. Bokononism is an original religion that is introduced in this book, Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. The book shows the importance of religion, even if that religion is "shameless lies". It also displays how people convince themselves that things are better then they really are. I read this book because of a promise I made to my father. I'm glad I made that promise; I just read a delightfully funny and deep tale about the end of the world.

Through the use of stylistic devices and character, Bradbury conveys his theme of the destructiveness of technology. He shows the reader that if technology reaches a point where it is doing daily chores and simple tasks for society, then we

When British and American forces raided the city with firebombs, Vonnegut and his fellow captives were saved due to their underground imprisonment. The bombing killed more than 135,000 people, most of whom were innocent civilians, more than the deaths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. After the bombing, Vonnegut was given the morbid task of carrying the corpses from Air-Raid shelters, including women, children, and the elderly; dead from concussions, fire, or suffocation. In a letter to his father, Vonnegut described his job and the reaction of the locals, “Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge pyres in the city,” (Boomhower). His distressing internment in Dresden not only furthered his anti-war sentiments, but also established a reoccurring theme in his books: the irrationality of government and the senselessness of war. Vonnegut saw the bombing of Dresden and the slaughter of innocents as wasteful and meaningless. He could not comprehend the purpose of destroying a “beautiful” and fully functional civilization (Wiswell 5). The annihilation of the city and lives of the innocent affirmed his views of war as a waste, and even lead to his feeling that, “civilization ended in World War I” (Vitale). This view indicated Vonnegut believed World War II was a meaningless act committed by the uncivilized.

What is religion? There is no one correct answer, however, one definition that seems to cover every aspect of most established religions is, "…the most comprehensive and intensive manner of valuing known to human beings" (Pecorino). In Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut takes this definition and creates his own religion in order to satirize all others. Bokononism, Vonnegut's contrived religion, is built on foma, or harmless untruths. Bokononists believe that good societies can only be built by keeping a high tension between good and evil at all times, and that there is no such thing as absolute evil (Schatt 64). They have created their own language with words such as karass, a group of people

    Cat's Cradle is, "Vonnegut's most highly praised novel. Filled with humor and unforgettable characters, this apocalyptic story tells of Earth's ultimate end, and presents a vision of the future that is both darkly fantastic and funny, as Vonnegut weaves a satirical commentary on modern man and his madness" (Barnes and Noble n.pag).  In Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut uses satire as a vehicle for threatened self-destruction when he designs the government of San Lorenzo.  In addition, the Bokonists practice of Boko-maru, and if the world is going to end in total self destruction and ruin, then people will die, no matter how good people are and what religion people believe.

<br>Thesis: Technology is the villain in Kurt Vonnegut's works because of his hatred of corporate insensitivity and his awareness of the destructive social impact of science and technology.

In Timequake, Vonnegut calls World War II "civilization's second unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide" (11). In his novel, Galapagos, he creates a war that ends life on Earth with the exception of a few who escape on a cruise ship headed for the Galapagos Islands. He points out the ability man currently has to end our existence on this planet. In Timequake, Vonnegut said, "I had to add, though, that I knew a single word that proved our democratic government was capable of committing obscene, gleefully rabid and racist, yahooistic murders of unarmed men, women, and children, murders wholly devoid of military common sense. I said the word. It was a foreign word. That word was Nagasaki" (196). Although nobody truly deserves to die because of war, the dropping of the second atomic bomb killed civilians who had done nothing to deserve their fate. America had already proved it had the power to destroy large masses of humans, yet out of cruelty, decided to drop the second a couple of days later. Vonnegut said, "the people in a country called Germany were so full of bad chemicals for a while that they actually built factories whose only purpose was to kill people by the millions. The people were delivered by railroad train" (Breakfast of Champions, p.137). War is hate.

Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.” (Harrison Bergeron, 1.) The idea behind this opening paragraph is to show how ridiculous government powers have become, as well as warn people that governments are increasingly taking over the freedom and personal attributes of the individual. The same argument and ridicule can be found expressed in the short story “Welcome to the Monkey House.” Vonnegut introduces the absurd control the government has over the individual in the fictitious society by stating “So the world government was making a two-pronged attack on overpopulation. One pronging was the encouragement of ethical suicide, which consisted of going to the nearest Suicide Parlor and asking the Hostess to kill you painlessly while you lay on a Barcalounger. The other pronging was compulsory ethical birth control.” (Welcome to the Monkey House, 30.) As a satirist, Vonnegut goes where others don’t dare; he satirizes the future in a cautionary manner to express concern for the possibility of future government power.

His works are significantly influenced by that genre, but contain strikingly relevant commentaries about contemporary American society which set him apart from other science-fiction writers. His use of science fiction draws a humorous contrast between the all-important significance of the nature of the universe and of reality, and the insignificance of human life and society. All of his works emphasize the enormous forces acting on his characters, not the least of which is fate. As his writing progressed and matured, this stylistic nuance became more and more evident. In his book Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut describes his own style by means of Tralfamadorians, an alien race for whom time is nonexistent, and whose literature reflects this:

Growing up we learn the importance of many different things. Of all these things, we have learned that being accepted into society, forming friendships, and loving someone are very important to us. In Kurt Vonnegut&amp;#8217;s short story, &amp;#8220;Who Am I This Time?';, we see through the experiences of Helene Shaw that by shutting ourselves off from others around us we can miss out on some of the most important things in life.

It tells us that technology sometimes is dangerous and vital if we cannot gain power over it.

Under the subtopic titled “design of the society”. He insinuated that Man was forced to use his ingenuity against nature and hence he made a reflective statement that “people don’t not know how to live peaceable with each other; they need an external artifact such as nature or machine to weld us together or to discharge our aggression”. Regardless of how appalling that sounds, it is true and still significant in today’s society. The test of strength and aggression from one nation state to another is the number of arsenal and nuclear war head it possess(machine).