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Cat's Cradle

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Cat's Cradle is a 1963 science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. It explores issues of science, technology and religion, satirizing the arms race and many other targets along the way. After turning down his original thesis, the University of Chicago, in 1971, awarded Vonnegut his Master's degree in anthropology for Cat's Cradle.

Plot summary

At the opening of the book, Andrew the main character first meets Miss Mowat along with Mr. Fyles the narrator describes a time when he was planning to write a book about what important Americans did on the day Hiroshima was bombed. While researching this topic, the narrator becomes involved with the children of Felix Hoenikker, a fictional Nobel laureate physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb. As the novel progresses, the narrator learns of a substance called ice-nine, created by the late Hoenikker and now secretly in the possession of his children. Ice-nine is an alternative structure of water that is solid at room temperature. When a crystal of ice-nine is brought into contact with liquid water, it becomes a seed that 'teaches' the molecules of liquid water to arrange themselves into the solid form, ice-nine.

Felix Hoenikker, although dead, is in some ways the central character of the book. It is the narrator's quest for biographical details about Hoenikker that provides both the background and the connecting thread between the various subsections of the story. Hoenniker himself is depicted as amoral and apathetic towards anything other than his research, a genius who does not care how his research is used, as in his role of "Father of the Atomic Bomb", and in his creation of "ice-nine", something he saw as a mental puzzle (suggested by a Pentagon general) which ends up destroying life on Earth.

The narrator and the Hoenikker children eventually end up on the fictional Caribbean island of San Lorenzo, one of the poorest countries on Earth, where the people speak a barely comprehensible dialect of English. For example "twinkle, twinkle, little star" is rendered "Tsvent-kiul, tsvent-kiul, lett-pool store". It is ruled by the fictional dictator "Papa" Monzano, who threatens all opposition with impalement on a giant hook, although it is revealed later on that the hook is only actually used once every two years.

The religion of the people of San Lorenzo, called Bokononism, encompasses concepts unique to the novel. The supreme act of worship of the Bokononists is called 'boku-maru', which is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the naked soles of the feet of two persons.

It is supposed to result in peace and joy between the two communicants, and when detected, is of course punished with death by the dictator, who wishes his people to be as scared, isolated and oppressed as possible. This dictator, ironically, is hailed as "one of Freedom's greatest friends" by representatives of the American government.

The dictator has bribed a son of Felix Hoenikker with a high government appointment in exchange for a piece of ice-nine, and he uses it to commit suicide as he lies dying from inoperable cancer. Consistent with the properties of 'ice-nine' the dictator's corpse instantly turns into a block of solid ice at normal room temperature. A sudden airplane crash into the dictator's seaside palace causes his still-frozen body to tumble into the ocean, at which point all the water in the world's seas, rivers, and groundwater also turns into ice-nine in a gigantic chain reaction, which destroys the ecology of the earth and causes the extinction of practically all life forms in only a few days.

In Vonnegut's own words: (from Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons)

The title of the book derives from the string game "cat's cradle". Early in the book, we learn that Felix Hoenikker was playing cat's cradle when the atom bomb was dropped. The game is later referenced by Newt Hoenikker, Felix's dwarf son.

The character Felix Hoenikker was inspired by Irving Langmuir, a scientist at General Electric in Schenectady, New York, where Vonnegut worked in the 1950s, with the town of Ilium representing Schenectady in many of Vonnegut's works. Langmuir himself came up with the idea of ice-nine as a joke. In terms of characterization, however, Hoenikker is a composite figure assembled from Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller, the two scientists who finalized the math for the H-Bomb.

The Hoenikker family also shares some characteristics with Vonnegut's own.

Cat's Cradle was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1964.

A few years after the publication of Cat's Cradle, Soviet scientists announced the discovery of polywater, a substance that seemed eerily similar to ice-nine. The fervor around polywater lasted a few years but subsided when the initial results were shown to have been caused by impurities.

Terms introduced in the novel

Terms of Bokononism

The religion of the people of San Lorenzo, called Bokononism, encompasses concepts unique to the novel, with San Lorenzan names such as:

  • karass - a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will. The people can be thought of as fingers in a Cat's Cradle.
  • duprass - a karass of only two people, who almost always die within a week of each other. The typical example is a loving couple who work together for a great purpose.
  • granfalloon - a false karass; i.e., a group of people who imagine they have a connection that does not really exist. An example is "Hoosiers"; Hoosiers are people from Indiana, and Hoosiers have no true spiritual destiny in common, so really share little more than a name.
  • wampeter - the central point of a karass
  • foma - harmless untruths
  • wrang-wrang - Someone who steers a Bokononist away from their line of perception
  • vin-dit - a sudden shove in the direction of Bokononism
  • saroon - to acquiesce to a vin-dit
  • duffle - the destiny of thousands of people placed on one person
  • stuppa - a fogbound child
  • sin-wat - a person who wants all of somebody's love for themself
  • pool-pah - wrath of God, "shit storm"
  • Busy, busy, busy - words Bokononists whisper when they see an example of how interconnected everything is
  • boku-maru - the supreme act of worship of the Bokononists, which is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the naked soles of the feet of two persons.
  • Borasisi and Pabu, the Sun and Moon; the binary trans-Neptunian object (66652) Borasisi and its moon (66652) Borasisi I Pabu bear their names.

    • Borasisi, the Sun, held Pabu, the Moon, in his arms and hoped that Pabu would bear him a fiery child. But poor Pabu gave birth to children that were cold, that did not burn...Then poor Pabu herself was cast away, and she went to live with her favorite child, which was Earth.

Other terms

  • Pissant - somebody who thinks he always knows everything better than the others, and finds himself "too smart". A pissant has got to argue with anything that anybody says, no matter what it is about. (description can be found in chapter 59 "Fasten Your Seat Belts")

In popular culture

In the 2003 film The Recruit Walter Burke (Al Pacino) references Cat's Cradle when explaining to James Clayton (Colin Farrell) that a computer virus the CIA has developed behaves in a manner similar to ice-nine, in that it transmits through electrical systems.

Adaptations

The book was adapted into script form by Richard Kelly, the writer and director of Donnie Darko. A film adaptation of Cat's Cradle was expected to be made in 2007 but now it is scheduled for 2009.

The book has been picked up by Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way. Father and son team James and Jake Hart have been linked to the developing script.

A calypso musical adaptation will be presented by Untitled Theater Company #61in New York beginning February 2008.

External links and quotations

References



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Last updated on Monday March 10, 2008 at 19:19:48 PDT (GMT -0700)
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