Jennifer | Pushing Pages
Written on Sep 16, 2019
Cat's Cradle follows a writer, who identifies himself as John only once at the beginning of the book, set off to discuss his adventures following the life of Dr. Felix Hoenniker - and later his eccentric family. What starts off as what might seem a story of a journalistic attempt to document one of the "founding fathers" of the atomic bomb's life, quickly turns into a strange adventurous tale that almost felt inspired by Gulliver's Travels in some way. In fact, John references the story once.
The architectural conceit of Cat's Cradle is in how it was setup to be a linear narrative with little straying off course. The story's setup in the first couple of sections really leave you to believe the point at which it starts is where it might end. But Vonnegut sets up Cat's Cradle to mimic the lack of pointedness of it all, the overarching tongue-in-cheek theme. Despite stating the main character was a Christian before Bokonism, John repeatedly inserts vocabulary and proverbs from Bokonism into each section. Even before Bokonism is a relevant part of John's life, sequentially speaking, tainting his overall reverence to his past and where his life and perspective was at that time.
The narrative is segmented into conversations and revelations. The segments do continuously tell a story, but not in the way a character might put one foot in front of the other. Nearly each one ends on a witty note that relates to the research John is doing, or life itself.
"What is the secret of life?" I asked.
"I forget," said Sandra.
"Protein," the bartender declared. "They found out something about protein."
"Yeah," said Sandra, "that's it."
The girls sang "O Little Town of Bethlehem." I am not likely to forget very soon their interpretation of the line: "The hopes and fears of all the years are here with us tonight."
He shuddered, "Sometimes I wonder if he wasn't born dead. I never met a man who was less interested in the living. Sometimes I think that's the trouble with the world: too many people in high places who are stone-cold dead."
Truth
One of the main themes of Cat's Cradle is truth. Where it lives, the lack of it, the deceit of how we convey it.
John's intentions were to find the truth of who Dr. Felix Hoenniker was. He states that his original book was to be a Christian one of an account of what "important Americans had done on the day when the fist atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan." Labeling this as Christian felt awfully poignant and funny, as American patriotism - particularly in the 1960s - required a healthy fear of God with your red, white, and blue. This is also seen much later in the book when two wholehearted American Christians are thrilled by an air show in San Lorenzo wherein cutouts of the world's most notorious dictators and tyrants of the time (Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, etc.) were lined up to be shot down.
"They got practically every enemy that freedom ever had out there," H. Lowe Crosby declared.
The Crosbys romanticized their own freedoms, on a farce of an island, whose enemies were tyrants reduced to comic book villains. Separated by only a decade or more from the last global conflict, they had begun to reminisce on complete terror with only the memories of how America won. They carry with them the same sense of priority found in most Americans in the '60s (and even today). This feeling is also echoed by Claire Minton on the same plane where John meets the Crosbys:
[John:] "I guess Americans are hated a lot of places."
"People are hated a lot of places." Claire pointed out in her letter that Americans, in being hated, were simply paying the normal penalty for being people, and that they were foolish to think they should somehow be exempted from that penalty.
Every character throughout the book has their own version of the truth. Each Hoenniker child (now adult) tells a different story about their deceased father. Frank considers himself most like him - a man good at one thing and it's not people. Angela considers him the greatest man of all time, stripped of her childhood to care for her family in the absence of her late mother. Newt considers him the most comical and scary man of all, constantly speaking to his disconnect and inattentiveness.
When John hears all of these stories collectively, he seems more likely to agree with Newt, and still look at him fondly for the genius he was. John stood somewhere in the middle as a somewhat trusting narrator, but with the rest of his tale, you have to wonder how trusting his perception really can be.
Bokonism, it is said, is about truth. But even that is a lie, which John makes sure to debunk from the very beginning, citing the first line of The Books of Bokonon:
"All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies."
My Bokonoist warning is this:
Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.
So be it.
Bokonism has words for every equal and opposite. In the first section of Cat's Cradle, we're introduced to one of our first Bokonist terms, karass. A karass is a term intended for those you find allegiance with - familial recognition, team alliance, a friendly love. It's one of the most important words throughout the book, but the writing almost tricks you into missing that point until much later. How John assigns members to his karass seemed exclusionary, and as if he was always missing the people in front of him who had the most to say. He was a character constantly searching and never receiving that which he thought he deserved. On the opposite end of that spectrum was the granfalloon, a Bokonist's term for a "false karass." It was saved for those always most reaching for a karass. It is similar to the allegiances we blindly take. We might superficially attach ourselves to other Americans, feeling a sense of camaraderie therein undeserved. Hazel Crosby does something similar in her attachment to all Hoosiers, and her desire to have them all call her "Mom." A seemingly childless mother seeking family in all things familiar. But as you weave through the narrative, finding John declaring this man or that woman his karass - and keeping in mind that all of Bokonism teaches mainly lies - you learn all of these declared kin are merely for comfort.
When John lands in San Lorenzo, he is accompanied by the Crosbys, the Hoenniker siblings, and the Mintons. The island of San Lorenzo is a place full of what looked to be very poor, very skinny, very apathetic-to-dismayed islanders greeting them at the airport. It was run by a man named "Papa" Manzano, who had a dictator bent to everything he said and did. And despite Bokonism starting at San Lorenzo, by two men who just felt like making up a ridiculous religion, Bokonism was outlawed. (And still everyone practiced it.)
Despite the impoverished lifestyles of the San Lorenzo people, Bokonism provided a balance. It was a reason to keep going, or a reason to go with the tides - so to speak - when life continued down a path of uncertainty and bad luck.
The Hook
Throughout the island, which has been colonized and abandoned by numerous European and American entities over the centuries, a similar iconography to Christianity littered the dictatorially ruled San Lorenzo. While Papa boasted the island was a Christian island - a fact of which drew the Crosbys there themselves - every member of the island, even Papa, was a devout Bokonist. The Hook by which practicing Bokonists were hung once every couple of years, and the one reserved for Bokonon himself, resembled the crucifix in Christendom.
Bokonism was stated to be outlawed, and Bokonon himself was an outlaw that Papa declared he would hunt and kill. It was a tradition brought about my Bokonon's own comrade McCabe, as a way to up the stakes for this hokey religion they concocted. If it is outlawed, the thrills of still following give the people of San Lorenzo something to chase after and risk everything for. If Bokonon is an outlaw, it gives randomly selected men and women a chance to fight on Papa's side to "hunt" down their number one enemy. It was a performance, a show. Much like the air show full of dictators to be shot down. Or the way Hazel clenches a Hoosier's arm as she demands they call her "Mom." Or the way John later makes love to Mona despite their both complete indifference when it was over.
When John eventually is handed the role a President of San Lorenzo for no other reason than Frank doesn't want it, he hesitated even ripping down the very Hook reserved for Bokonon. He thought himself a savior for a moment, before realizing that San Lorenzo needed that chase, inclusion, and sense of promise that Bokonism offered. And Bokonism had to offer such things so long as they were deemed illegal or perverted. The funniest part about Bokonism is in how it teaches us how predictable and codependent we all are. It not only say it, but spits it right back in your face. Even Bokonism knows what it is, and knows it is simply a device for others to feel secure.
Every ritual of Bokonism felt like two mad men came up with it all while drunk atop the mountains of the island. Bare feet wriggling together in a form of foreplay and spiritual conversation, and yet everyone did it just the same. Even John, who fell madly in love with Bokonism the moment he landed.
Mona
I don't know where to start with this. The cons of Cat's Cradle are minimal, and even they I'm still working out if they are intentional in some way. Let's start with some easy ones. No, I'm not talking about how the word "midget" is used in a book, and the edition I own, was published in 1968. That seems pedantic. I can read with the time's eyes. On some level I can even understand and see why infantilizing a little person like Newt seemed appropriate to those around him.
No, the first thing I noticed was the treatment of Mona.
The further you get into the story of Cat's Cradle, the more obvious it is how unfit and reaching even John is. He starts off as a somewhat trusting narrator, but the more he reveals of himself as a Bokonist, the more erratic his recollections feel. On several occasions John recalls his life is "meaningless," and despite declaring his past self as Christian, he answers that he has no religion to another character later on in the story. He's lost.
When he first sees Mona it is on the cover of a magazine, where he then exposits about her beauty for an entire paragraph. He does the same two more times (at least) when he daydreams of her and meets her later. There is a part of me that took great pause reading this. Even through a comedic lens, this overbearing way of speaking of women - as male authors often do - felt like another instance of the "male gaze" inserting itself where it doesn't belong. After internalizing how much he desired this woman on the cover of a magazine for quite some time, he is heartbroken to find she is engaged to Frank Hoenniker. His lamenting was very territorial in that way that all who think they're being romantic are about the subject of their affections. Despite the fact that Mona was never his, despite the fact that Mona never would be. Because she was a human being.
It could be said that Mona represented what Bokonism was later meant to represent to John: just something to fill that void. By this point, without completely realizing, we're meeting a man of a failed marriage, no children, and always on the hunt for the next story. He wouldn't even go so far as to declare a religion despite the claim earlier in the book. He was lonelier than we took him for. A similar observation is made by Americans overall when Claire's final line of a column she wrote stated:
"Americans [...] are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier."
When John finds information on Mona in Castle's manuscript, there were multiple index entries to indicate Mona was someone who wanted her freedom, hated being the poster woman of San Lorenzo, and hated being moved between fatherly figure to fatherly figure, man to man. Yet despite all of this, it was if John could only read her name on the page and declared how beautiful she was once more. This was pretty obviously a joke from Vonnegut, but I again hesitated to give too much credit where credit was due when several sections later, her breasts are described as pomegranates. Was this Vonnegut's way of poking fun at the men who do so unironically?
Mona is apathetic and disconnected from what is happening around her. When she's offered to the new President, John, she does so with as little enthusiasm as possible but never negatively affected by the knowledge that she was no longer engaged to Frank. Moments later, John shows his ass and tries to claim her as his, and she almost walks out on him. But their connection of touching feet-to-feet made her say, "I love you," in a way that she does with everyone and merely offered to John. For John it was much more, and it was laughably so. When she does kill herself, she does so laughing, as the rest of the group had died by the command of Bokonon. It all called back to the overarching theme of the religion: Nothing really means anything. But am I okay with the fact that she was, in many ways, just a device? Even under the guise of comedy, I'm not sure.
See the cat? See the cradle?
Cat's Cradle is the title of the novel, the title of a section, the name of a child's game, and a recurring theme. Put simply by Newt, it's a game of deceit. This game of string is supposed to be worked out with other players, and in the center you build a cradle for the cat. But as Newt points out, it never looks like a cradle, and there is never any cat. Still, people play. Is it just another way to pass the time? Is it the idea that you're working towards a reward you'll never see? Did the people of San Lorenzo die and find Heaven?
Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end...
