Empty Symbolism

Throughout Cat’s Cradle, there runs the motif of two ideas being set in opposition. Truth and lies, good and evil, Bokonon and Papa Monzano, all exist in their familiar forms and incarnations because the other exists. Would we be able to define truth in the absence of lie? Or evil in the absence of good? This theoretical dynamic tension holds these forces in place like planets held in their orbital patterns. Each circles the other, as is shown in the endless, fruitless pursuit of Bokonon. It isn’t a matter of catching a rebel religious leader; it’s a matter of holding the forces that govern our perspective of reality in place. “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 that awful truth,” Julian Castle explains. “They were all employed full time as actors in a play they understood, that any human being anywhere could understand and applaud” (Vonnegut 174-175). Without the tension, the strings of the cat’s cradle fall slack and leave nothing but a tangled mess. But this tension, this constant force of opposition, may not be sustainable when a more objective reality impinges on our personal manufactured reality and when context or framing causes our perspectives to change. Looking once, one may see the cat’s cradle. Look again, and all of a sudden “no damn cat, and no damn cradle” (166). When this happens to Jonah is debatable. Perhaps it is when Jonah first reads the books of Bokonon, or when Newt first suggests it, or when Angela plays her clarinet with such beauty that it causes a moment of epiphany in Jonah that reveals he is incapable of understanding the glorious complexity of existence and can only pretend. Perhaps it is not a finite moment but a process of conversion. Regardless, the forces of dynamic tension as Jonah perceives them are severed, leaving him with nothing but the understanding of the illusion of purpose.

“I took my hands…to show him how empty of symbols they were…’What, for the love of God, is supposed to be in my hands?’” (285-286). The strings have been cut, the world has ended, the infinite game of cat’s cradle has fallen through. There is no use for symbolism when there is nothing to symbolize. In the Bokononist faith, this is not a cause for despair but rather a moment of clarity and epiphany, a moment of greater understanding of the subjectivity of truth and the role that subjectivity plays in determining how one perceives and experiences the surrounding world. Humans are the mud “that got to sit up and look around,” Bokonon professes (221). When the forces of dynamic tension no longer keep one’s foma in alignment and one realizes that one’s hands are empty, that is when one becomes aware of this gift of awareness. And it is then that one can construct one’s own purpose, creating not just a personal reality but a personal meaning. The book ends ambiguously, especially given the paradoxical conundrums and metatextual layering that are found throughout the story. Jonah is arguably the mouthpiece of Bokononism and also a surrogate for Vonnegut. So when the narrator ends his story, and the author his book, with a piece of the ending of another book, the Books of Bokonon, it could be possible that all the layers have imploded and the final act really is the promised creation of a monument to man’s divine stupidity. If this is the case, then Jonah has created and fulfilled his own purpose. He has no need for empty symbolism that reflects nothing but someone else’s broken foma because whatever life he lives now, whatever truth he chooses now, it will be done with personal meaning.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat’s Cradle. Delta Fiction, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Inc. 1963.