"Langmuir was absolutely indifferent to the uses that might be made of the truths he dug out of the rock and handed out to whoever was around.

But any truth he found was beautiful in its own right, and he didn’t give a damn who got it next."

After diving into the lies of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle in Thursday’s class, I became intrigued with discovering if, in fact, Vonnegut is human. By this I mean whether or not Vonnegut uses truth as the base of his lies. One quick Google search and a Wikipedia page later, I found myself with a whole floor of truth to his house of lies.

The most difficult thing for an author writing fiction, is trying to keep his/her audience interested in what they already may know is fiction. Like the author of An Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge, the use of vivid and accurate detail of one’s surrounding can usually suck a reader in. The town of Ilium, New York, is used as the first setting of the novel as Jonah begins his search for the “truth” behind Felix Hoenikker’s life and the life of his family. The description of this town is deceptively similar to that of the Troy, New York. It isn’t surprising to realize that Ilium is the Roman city that replaced the city of Troy during the Byzantine Era. The reason behind using the city of Troy, comes from the point in Vonnegut’s life in which he began working, post-WWII. While it didn’t surprise me to find out that he worked as a writer, it did surprise me when I found out where it was he worked. Vonnegut worked for the public relations group at the General Electric research facility, where scientists were brought in to do pure research. Looking more and more like the re-search facility of Felix Hoenikker, I read on to find out that Vonnegut was specifically in charge of interviewing scientists about their research. This is where Vonnegut first became infuriated with scientists and their pure research. After interviewing these men it became clear to Vonnegut that the scientists were indifferent when looking at the ways in which their inventions could be used. One scientist that specifically stood out was one Irving Langmuir. This Nobel Prize-winning scientist quickly became the character of Hoenikker. The quote above is Vonnegut’s view of Langmuir as stated in the August 2, 1980 edition of The Nation, and clearly conveys the message about science that he tries to send in Cat’s Cradle.

There are many more similarities between Vonnegut’s life and the lives of the characters in Cats Cradle. I believe that the most important similarity is theme of Science vs. Religion. It is a theme that throughout history has chose one side or the other; that is until Vonnegut arrived. He points out and rips apart both fundamental institutions and plays them off as extremes. He then creates and favors a middle ground that consists of controlled research and religion that’s honest in its lies but that still makes it’s members happy.

It’s the hidden facts and the honest theories that make me continuously go back to the start of the book. Reading and re-reading that one line; “Nothing in this book is true.”