Cat’s Cradle
Initial Reactions
To be honest, I found the book slow-moving at first, however as the plot thickened, I grew to enjoy it quite a bit more. This is my first Vonnegut read.
Vonnegut’s satire (to me) emerges most poignantly at the beginning of his arrival in San Lorenzo, particularly when he speaks with one Julian Castle. At that point in the novel, the connexion between politics and religion becomes evident. The best comparison I can think of for the elder Castle’s thoughts on the relation is that of Marx: “religion is the opium of the masses,” by which it is not meant that religion is toxic but that religion offers relief from the harshness of material conditions. In this way, it also functions similarly to Frankl’s logotherapy: “he who has a why can bear almost any how.” (Check citation.)
By far the most hilarious fiction of the work is the figure of Bokonon, who is something like a cynical prophet. And the hilarity begins with Bokonon’s admission that all he’s saying are lies. Which begs the curious question: why does anyone follow him?
Comparisons with some modern forms of Christianity can be made as well. That everyone in San Lorenzo is a Bokononist, even the high ranking members who have made Bokononism illegal in the country. It made me wonder, how much do narratives about persecution and martyrdom factor into the significance of one’s faith in their lives? Certainly one might look to Ireland to answer this question: even if you were an atheist, it would make a difference whether you were a Protestant atheist or a Catholic atheist.
Naturally, there is some commentary on science as well. Ice-nine is an obvious stand-in for the Atomic Bomb, developed during Vonnegut’s time. The indifference with which is was created is an interesting contrast to the war- and ideology-fuelled development of the Bomb, as well as an indictment of blind faith in technological progress. Faith in useful lies is portrayed as preferable to this.
Quotes that caught my eye
“You may quote me:” (Julian Castle) said. “Man is vile, and man makes nothing worth making, knows nothing worth knowing.”
Newt remained curled in the chair. He held out his painty hands as though a cat’s cradle were strung between them. “No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat’s cradle is nothing but a bunch of X’s between somebody’s hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X’s…”
“And?”
“No damn cat, and no damn cradle.”
I think this is really the crux of Vonnegut’s point about religion. It is a name—or structure—given to make meaning in a field in which it simply doesn’t exist. Kinda like in the Matrix (films), while you may perceive (for instance) a spoon, that doesn’t mean that a spoon is really there. “There is no spoon.”
So I said good-bye to government, And I gave my reason: That a really good religion Is a form of treason. (Books of Bokonon)
I simply love this quote because I love irreverent spirituality.
MCCABE AND BOKONON did not succeed in raising what is generally thought of as the standard of living,” said Castle. “The truth was that life was as short and brutish and mean as ever. …”
“But people didn’t have to pay as much attention to the awful truth. As the living legend of the cruel tyrant in the city and the gentle holy man in the jungle grew, so, too, did the happiness of the people grow. They were all employed full time as actors in a play they understood, that any human being anywhere could understand and applaud.”
“So life became a work of art,” I marveled.
But then I understood that a millennium would have to offer something more than a holy man in a position of power, that there would have to be plenty of good things for all to eat, too, and nice places to live for all, and good schools and good health and good times for all, and work for all who wanted it-things Bokonon and I were in no position to provide.
So good and evil had to remain separate; good in the jungle, and evil in the palace. Whatever entertain-ment there was in that was about all we had to give the people.
These three quotes (more than anything else I read) justify, I think, my comparison to Marx’s take on religion. In the case of Bokononism, religion is openly and explicitly used as a kind of opium to soothe the harshness of material conditions. There isn’t really anything they can do to remedy this, so of course they do what they must and invent something that gives people meaning, even when they’re living in shit and it’s all ridiculous.
“Maturity,” Bokonon tells us, “is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.”
I deeply believe in laughter.
more than anything else, to do what his father had done: to receive honors and creature comforts while escaping human responsibilities. He was accomplishing this by going down a spiritual oubliette.
I turned to Castle the elder. “Sir, how does a man die when he’s deprived of the consolations of literature?”
“In one of two ways,” he said, “petrescence of the heart or atrophy of the nervous system.”
“Neither one very pleasant, I expect,” I suggested.
“No,” said Castle the elder. “For the love of God, both of you, please keep writing!”
Bokonon tells us:
A lover’s a liar.
To himself he lies.
The truthful are loveless.
Like oysters their eyes!
In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.
And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.
“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.
“Certainly,” said man.
“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God. And He went away.
This is a hilarious parody of the creation story in Genesis. It’s the kind of parody worthy of something in Monty Python or Good Omens, which probably took their lead from what Vonnegut wrote here.
Here is a rough (and general) comparison of both accounts:
| Genesis | Bokonon |
|---|---|
| God creates the Earth | God creates the Earth |
| God creates man… out of dust, or dirt. | … out of mud. |
| God creates man… separately to the creatures, on day 6. | … with the creatures. |
| Man… is tempted into questioning. | … questions immediately. |
| God… banishes man from Paradise. | … leaves abruptly. |
| The funny thing to me is that, while the ends are different, the result to human beings feels like it’s the same. We’re simply left to our own devices. Yes, I’ll grant that the Hebrew Bible contains stories of how God was with his people, etc., but let’s be honest: we don’t really know how historical those books are. Likely, many of them are embellished or fictions, or are interpreted in a certain way post-hoc. |
This kind of re-interpretation was one of the interesting things about the work for me as a whole. From the very beginning, Jonah reads his story in light of his conversion to Bokononism, not as a strictly natural series of events. Instead, a narrative is imposed on these events, making meaning out of them, and offering the novel itself some sense of momentum/direction.
“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before,” Bokonon tells us. “He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”
If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.