"If I'd been born in Germany, I suppose I would have been a Nazi, bopping Jews and gypsies and Poles around, leaving boots sticking out of snowbanks, warming myself with my virtuous insides. So it goes."

~Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

Another Level of Truth

                      “All the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.” (Vonnegut, 5).  Honestly when I first read this line, I could not make any sense of it.  “Is Bokonon telling the truth which makes this statement a lie?  Does this mean he’s actually saying all the lies I tell you are truths?”  I started to get an answer to my confusion only after reading more about Frank Hoenikker.

                Jonah describes Dr. Hoenikker as “father of the atomic bomb, father of three children, and father of ice-nine” even though the title of father could not be further from the truth (Vonnegut, 114).  When the doctor accepts his Nobel Prize, he refers to himself as the “eight-year old kid” who “never stopped dawdling” (Vonnegut, 11).  Despite his age, he, like his two younger sons, was tucked into blankets by Angela, and he never lost the sense of aimless curiosity that commonly drives children.  Jonah calls Frank the father of various things, but in the end, his description of Frank merely captures the surface value of his accomplishments.  

                By explicitly emphasizing the difference in Frank’s actual role and his title as a “father,” Vonnegut helps explain the meaning behind the first line in The Books of Bokonon.  While Dr. Hoenikker is factually the father of all the things Jonah describes him as, he is also anything but a true father.  Vonnegut wants the readers to understand that there is always another truth underneath the surface of every person and situation.  Another quick example of this motto would be the index entry that Jonah shows the Miltons.  Although in the eyes of an ordinary person the index is merely an index, a professional indexer such as Claire Milton can see some other meaning beneath the surface of all the page numbers and short inserts which allows her to read the author’s character.  At the start of this course, we have been challenged to question everything we read and never take something for granted.  I, however, believe that the right approach is not thinking everything is a lie but rather everything has another truth waiting to be found.

Fiction or Reality?

Although drama TV shows are known to be largely fictional, the writers of each show can easily manipulate the audience’s perception of truth. After our class discussion on the episode, “The Monster At The End Of This Book” from Supernatural, it became clear that the writers determine the audience’s perception of reality. For example, the writers’ choice to highlight the fact that Dean and Sam are reading their own lives written out by a higher power makes the audience more aware of their own role in the show. This emphasis on the characters acting out a storyline that is pre-determined draws attention to the role of the audience watching actors play out a screenplay. This, along with the presence of demons and archangels, reminds the viewers that the show is fictional and the reality inside the show is designed by the writers and does not necessarily show the truth.

This portrayal of reality shown in Supernatural, which is clearly fictional, can be compared to another TV drama such as Grey's Anatomy, which although still fictional, is aimed to be more scientific. Grey’s Anatomy, which is supposedly showing the “everyday lives” of doctors in a normal hospital, shows life or death situations as a norm. The writers, while basing some of the medical cases on real ones, exaggerate and fabricate situations that to most of the viewers could be true without knowing much about medicine. These writers intertwine the realistic setting of the hospital and operating rooms with the dramatic personal lives of the doctors to allow the audience to live vicariously through the doctors and begin to blur the lines of true and false. Because the writers use a scientific background and most viewers are not actual doctors, the audience is usually unaware that what they are seeing is false.

While both shows most likely go through a similar process of writing and acting, Grey's Anatomy, because it's categorized under science drama and located in a hospital, seems to be more truthful, when it is arguably just as fictional as Supernatural. The writers of TV shows seem to now be able to sway the audience to believe an altered version of reality and can choose if and when to remind the viewers that the show is fictional. Therefore, the writers hold the power to determine what kind of truth they want to portray.

Truth, Lies, and Bokonon

Part of what makes Vonnegut so entertaining to read (for me, at least) is that he is full of great one-liners.  As a casual reader, I might chuckle to myself then turn the page, but as students of literature we examine them a bit more closely. 

"Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this blog post either.  So be it." (Me).

One of the most telling things about Vonnegut's statement is his choice of the word 'useful.'  He could have chosen a word like 'legitimate' or even 'correct,' but instead he chooses useful.  This is a deliberate choice.  Bokononism arose not from a spiritual revelation or something of the like but rather a very practical need to control and keep happy the people of San Lorenzo.  Being followers of this outlawed religion is a small form of rebellion that makes the people feel a little more important.  What is also notable is that "a useful" religion implies that there could be any number of other useful religions that are entirely different from one another.  Thus the content of the religion and the accuracy of its beliefs are more or less irrelevant in terms of usefulness.  This brings us to the next part of his quote, which claims that at least one useful religion is based on lies.  Vonnegut has described himself as a freethinker, a humanist, and a Unitarian Universalist among other things.  He believed openly that religious beliefs about God and heaven and the like were entirely fabricated nonsense.  Not only does Vonnegut create a religion where truth is irrelevant, but he uses it to make a point about real religions. The usefulness of religion is much more about feeling like a part of something and giving meaning to life than knowing the truth.

Snape kills Dumbledore!: Cognitive Dissonance in Narrative and Literature

I should admit, at the outset, I do not often purposely stop myself from finishing a book. Most of the things I read I attempt to tackle in a single sprint, like a poorly-disciplined jogger. Those things that prove to be too long or too difficult I resentfully relinquish, often exhausted and occasionally too uninterested to re-tackle. However, I have chosen not to finish Cat's Cradle for a different reason: a particular theme that appears to be not only central to all the narratives we have seen in CPLIT 165 thus far, but one that I predict will be present in every other form of story we tackle in the upcoming months. I would hazard to guess that some form of cognitive dissonance will creep into every facet of our syllabus.

In psychology, the theory of cognitive dissonance refers to a very specific concept. Our minds are capable of holding many different thoughts, feelings, values, and opinions on various objects of our cognition. In some cases, we can even develop contrary thoughts on a single object. When this happens, a natural tension of the mind begins to build, brought on by two opposing concepts butting heads. Say, for example, I find a classmate very physically attractive, but her/his behavior or opinions repulsive. If my attraction and my repulsion are equally strong, I have a case of cognitive dissonance, a sense of mental tension between my two opposing thought processes. This sort of cognitive process seems to be inherent in most fictional literature, and is of principle importance in works concerned with truth and falsity as in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and Cat's Cradle.

In an ideal story, all parts of the narrative are equally important; they all work to establish the same cohesive tale. For the reader, however, the resolution of any story is the most objectively rewarding. It is where the catharsis is found, where disparate story lines are drawn into a single thread, and where the central tenets of the particular story are most likely to be found. And yet it seems, time after time, that the resolution always comes at the very end of the book! It seems, in literature, there is no such thing as dessert before dinner. As good little readers, of course, we know we must eat our veggies first; without the introduction and the rising action, the resolution is never as rewarding. As we read, then, we are subjected to two opposing cognitions. One tells us that what we really want is at the end of the book. Why read through the middle bits? Why tolerate deliberate ignorance of the conclusion? In short, we have the urge to know how the story ends. The second tells us that the ending will be powerful only if we read and understand the parts that come before it. In a way, this is an urge to delay the ending for as long as necessary. This, along with regular tension within the story, is what creates a sense of personal emotional investment for the reader (or watcher, for that matter).

In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, a sense of narrative cognitive dissonance is very immediate, almost purposefully abrasive. In a literal sense, the story ends once Payne is hung, but the continuation of the narrative sets up an immediate dissonance – the unlikeliness of Payne's escape versus the mere existence of a continuing narrative. We should be skeptical of his survival and the details the narrator provides, but the very fact that there are still words left to read suggests to us that Payne has actually survived somehow. This tension, which grows as the details of his escape become more unbelievable, is eventually resolved by the disappearance of one of our cognitions - We are shown that the continuance of the narrative was just Payne's last fantasy, played out in his head - and our cognitive dissonance vanishes in regards to the narrative.

Cat's Cradle, up to this point, reads more like an investigation into cognitive dissonance than an application of it. The Bokononist quote “All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies” (5) is practically a cognitive dissonance in of itself. It may be true that Vonnegut is trying to question the value or existence of absolute truth using Bokononism, but I find it much more plausible that he is actually examining the possible acceptance of cognitive dissonances through this “false” religion. Jonah's warning, “Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either”(6) seems to suggest a radically different approach to handling opposing concepts of truth or falsity. Perhaps the best way to resolve cognitive dissonances is to accept whichever thought is most useful at the time, whether it be a truth or a lie. A similar concept is approached in George Orwell's 1984, which is named “Doublethink”- the ability to believe one cognition whole-heartily, and then to believe the opposite with just as much conviction, as circumstances change.

I look forward to watching my own dissonances develop as I near the end of the book, but for now, I will let the tension linger.

Truth Hurts.... Literally

           Sometimes as humans we thoroughly enjoy and, in many cases, expect to hear exactly to what we want to. I can count numerous times in my life in which I wish that someone would have simply told me what I wanted to hear simply to ease the pain that came with the truth. Such was the case of "The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce. Throughout the course of this short story I found myself enthralled by the plight of the poor Peyton Farquhar. While reading this very visual and graphic piece I found myself not on a reader of this tale of woe but also a participant actively engaged in the fate of this man. I believe that this is true of most stories. Once we learn who the characters are we begin to attach ourselves and invest a piece of ourselves within them. I know that this was definitely the case with Peyton Farquhar. As he clung to the last bits of life hoping and praying to survivor I found myself pulling very strongly for the life of this man. And once the noose had been released from his neck and his escape made, I felt as if a weight had been lifted off of me. I began to feel as if I was the one who had just escaped from the precipice of death. However, this abruptly ended with a shot and flash. Dead was Peyton Farquhar and dead was I. All along I had been strung along. Given false hope that there may come good in what seemed to by a bottomless pit of peril and dismay. Its as if the literal noose around the neck of Farquhar had been placed around my psyche; slowly tightening until an ultimate end was reached and all hope is lost.
         
           I couldn't bring myself to understand why that had happened. Why did I ultimately succumb to the belief that everything would be fine in the case of Peyton Farquhar? Why is it in my nature to believe every word that is spoon fed to me through optimistic and promising diction? As I read the aforementioned passage again the zeal and excitement of the escape fade and are replaced by dismal feelings of disappointment at what I know to be the denouement. I guess what I can take from this experience is that all that glitters is not gold and the truth really does hurt.

The Humor Trap

When I first sat down to read Cat's Cradle I felt apprehensive. Who wants to start reading a novel where the author is obviously going to take advantage of them and then utterly confuse them until they sit in a corner crying out of sheer confusion? But alas, I began and found that the experience was actually one of fascination rather than pain. Though, what I also found was that an author's greatest strength when writing lies is humor. Humor is a reader's greatest enemy, not because it is not enjoyable, but because it softens the reader. A joke lulls a reader into a sense of security that cannot be afforded when dealing with a novel that is so blatantly messing with our definition of the truth. Vonnegut, the expert that he is, weaves humor in subtly and often enough that, at least in my case, it takes the edge off of our senses.

 "The words were a paraphrase of the suggestion by Jesus: 'Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's.'

Bokonon's paraphrase was this:

 'Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn't have the slightest idea what's really going on.'" (Vonnegut, 101)

 The aforementioned quote is one that made me laugh. Just the bluntness of Bokonon's paraphrasing had me shocked into chuckles. This is what is dangerous. The meaning of this phrase goes far beyond a joke. When Bakonon and McCabe first set foot onto San Lorenzo and first tried to set up a government they wanted to set up a communist government where everyone got a piece of everything. Through his teachings, Bakonon is reinforcing this by saying that Caesar should not get what is his, but should be ignored and only given what is fair. Vonnegut's use of humor is dark at times, like here,  but it still adds a layer of softness to the hard truths he is presenting. The main goal of Vonnegut's writing is commentary on the world around him and on the nature of truth, and no funny quips should prevent us from seeing this true purpose.

Sources:

Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat's Cradle. New York, NY: Delta Trade Paperbacks, 1998. Print.

How do you say "Blowin' Money Fast" in San Lorenzan?

In light of my initial ideas tied to Cat's Cradle being discussed at length in others' posts, I thought I'd delve into some areas that have yet to be discussed, namely the areas underneath Rick Ross's glorious breasts.

I like to believe that he's got some calypsos inscribed beneath those undulating flesh bags.

Not really. I do have a few things to say about the metatextuality found in Cat's Cradle and its relation to hip-hop though.

Much like Cat's Cradle, hip-hop is full of tense synergy between true events and false braggadocios. Take Rick Ross. Born William Leonard Roberts II, Ross worked as a corrections officer before taking the name of a cocaine kingpin and turning into this guy. Just like Bokonon's "rebirth" on the shores of San Lorenzo (Vonnegut, 107-108), Ross found a place to develop his new persona in Miami. Now he's got a dedicated audience all around the world. His doctrine is a cadre of "sweet, sweet lies"(Vonnegut), if you will. Whereas Bokonon recommends that one allow life to take its absurd, senseless course, Ross extols reckless hedonism. It's his bread and butter, and he eats lots of it. 

Obviously this doesn't mean that everything Ross proclaims is true. You're not really supposed to believe him when he claims that he's moving brick after brick of the 'caine uncut.  Kind of like Bokononism, Ross's music (and much of hip-hop, for that matter) is about accepting the woes of life and then escaping, however briefly, from those troubles. 

This isn't to say that hip-hop is all talk though. If hip-hop is a coin, you've got one side that has the aforementioned fantasy world engraved on it, the other side bearing the gritty reality on its battered face. It's here that metatextuality comes further into play. Though a rapper might include some reality in his lyrics, it's almost impossible to know what's real and what's fiction. Self-referentialism further complicates parsing out the truth, and when listeners become involved, well, then things get really fucked up. As a reader or listener, it is one's responsibility to decipher, to the best of one's ability, the latent reality of a text, whether it's written Kurt Vonnegut Jr. or Waka Flocka Flame. 

From a Believer in Going with the Flow

At the very start of Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, I found myself feeling a strong connection to the Bokonist ideals that are described. To put it simply, Bokonism reminds me of "going with the flow," the almost-too-frequently-heard mantra which happens to be the phrase by which I try to live my life. Jonah writes that "a karass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries" (2). Also a believer in fate and destiny, I took this to mean that the greater power or force, whatever it is, that leads us to go certain places and come into contact with certain people in life, is something which cannot be controlled and does not obey rules. Whatever wills us onto the predestined path we take in life is beyond our comprehension, and thus any attempt to understand it, to break it down into a million pieces and dissect it, is a waste of time.

Reflecting on Bokonism's application to our reality, I realized that it is the instillation in people of exactly these principles that could help solve a lot of their problems. If people learn to accept things for what they are and stop over-thinking and questioning everything, they just might be a bit happier with themselves. Maybe there is not a point in trying to discern between the truthful and deceptive elements of every little thing, as it so often leads to frustration and ultimately no conclusion. Maybe in order to acquire greater knowledge, people merely need to be more willing to suspend their disbelief, instead of constantly approaching things in a scientific way. It seems to me that adopting a Bokonon-esque perspective would create more "go with the flow"-ers out there--we would achieve a pleasant, less cynical human race.

Mind of the Beholder

I think something that has been reoccurring throughout our first few topics is that life, or even just truth, is in the mind of the beholder. We are all the main characters of our own individual story and set forward what we believe to be true whether that is the commonly accepted belief or not. One thing that becomes apparent though is how insignificant we can be in someone else’s story. In our first reading, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce, Peyton Farquhar’s story told from just a Union soldier witnessing it would just be a quick unimaginative tale of a man being hung and then, most likely, the soldier would continue on with his life. At the same time we might play a greater role then even we know. The “Writer” in the Supernatural clip we watched thought of himself as a mere fiction writer when in that reality he turned out to be a prophet to God.  Whether he chooses to accept such a role would still be in his hands.

            As humans we are often times too caught up in our own stories and even overlook where our stories overlap with someone else’s. We might even create our own truths or lies based on stubbornness or lack of knowledge. In Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jonah will often times look down on others and hold his religion of Bokonon as the one and only truth in life. “Hazel’s obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass of a seeming team that was meaningless”(p. 91). Though the group of Hoosiers might seem like a joke, or even just irrelevant, to Jonah this group meant a lot to Hazel who seemed to love having something in common with people she just met. Living in his own story he creates truths and lies about the world as anyone can do. Even in our collective reality we create truths in the forms of laws and regulation, deciding what is just and that lying in general is bad. By agreeing, for the most part, with what is good and bad in society people try to create a world with mutual happiness and even this will eventually be written down as a story of its own in the form of history. And just something more to think about even if someone’s life/ beliefs are against social norms who is to deprive said person of their desired reality especially if it does not affect yours?

The 30 Words for Truth

I have heard that the Eskimo language has over 30 words for love. I believe the same should hold for truth.  As a young child, everything my older brother said was truth. When you spread a vicious rumor about someone and you have to tell them, looking them in the eye, that you were the one who caused them so much pain; that is the truth. But that is also courage, and redemption, and acceptance of weakness, and so many other big words I could throw out. When you lie back after a particularly satisfying day, and just can't stop smiling, that is it's own truth, in fact, for me, that is the most sublime and simple kind. Yet many would not even call that truth. So when you want, really crave, really need to believe something, will it come true? 

           In "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce, the reader's truth gets flipped on it's head. Yet Peyton Farquhar, some would argue, truly dies in the moment he springs towards his wife in a surreal morning sunrise. So does what the narrator believes and records really matter? Does it even really matter if Peyton Farquhar existed? He exists for us now, and in that conundrum lies the power of literature. My high school creative writing teacher, who I can honestly say lives by one of the most unique truths I know, had this quote in his room by a woman author, and though I cannot know obtain the author, the quote went like this: "Literature is one big lie. And in the middle of it, lies the truth." Sometimes, in order to tell the truth, we must lie. In order for us to really know Peyton Farquhar as a character, we must experience his version of the truth. I, as a reader, wanted Peyton to live because his truth showed us what an optimistic, heroic character he was at heart. He valiantly tried to craft his own truth; he believed in his truth more than anything else, even reality. And our truths, especially in a society as competitive as ours, are hard to hold on to. We read lies to discover truth just as we tell lies when we do not want to believe the truth. A writer, in fact, as the author of the quote so magnificently pointed out, has the huge burden and honor of telling the truth through lies. Through stories, through placing an immense trust in characters, we discover our own truths. The more stories we tell, the more stories we contribute to, and especially the more stories we hear, the more confident we become in our own truths. In the penultimate paragraph, Bierce writes, "At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity."  Oh, how I want this to be Peyton's reality! If we follow the quote on my teacher's wall, we can have Peyton be dead and, miraculously, have his version of the story be true. And oh what a miracle literature is.

           

Selective Ignorance

In America, we are obsessed with truth. We idealize it to the point where it is nearly the most important aspect of our lives. We have Mythbusters, Snopes ‘fair’ news, polygraphs, Jerry Springer, science. We are on a mad quest for enlightenment.  We see blatant ignorance as weakness. As Dr. Breed says, “The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” Those with the least knowledge are fools.

Yet at the same time, we often believe in the unprovable. Bokononism shares a basic principle with many religions: faith, “a belief not based on proof” (Dictionary.com). The idea is that you can gain peace of mind by suspending your disbelief and betting your soul upon something that cannot be revealed by truth. The afterlife could be seen as a foma, “a harmless untruth” (Vonnegut, vii); a belief that makes people “brave and kind and healthy and happy” (Vonnegut, vii).

                So how do faith and truth work together? Is it even possible? When I started writing this post, I was going to say that Americans are so addicted to truth that we would choose it over the peace of mind that comes with being ignorant. However, during the writing process, I realized that even though we choose not to admit it, we believe in a subjective truth. We pursue only the facts that don’t cause us pain.  A life of selective ignorance is much easier and less painful than one where we actively seek to destroy our own foundations.

We already practice Bokononism in a way, even though the religion itself it may sound ridiculous in the context of Cat’s Cradle.  Don’t we avoid the truth when it makes us uncomfortable? Usually the truth is a weapon we use to defend ourselves: in court, in an argument, or in a thesis. We avoid the truths that shake our own footing. Who wants to find out that all the things they believe are false? The madman always fancies himself sane; the prisoner is always innocent; the racist is always justified.  

I think we simply create a comfortable cloak of truths and hide ourselves from the remainder of reality. We rest on half-truths not so different from the lies of Bokononists.

Works Cited

"Faith." Def. 2. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, 2012. Web. 12 Sept. 2012. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith?s=t>. 

Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat's Cradle. New York, NY: Delta Trade Paperbacks, 1998. Print.

Fact or Fiction?

            While the reader may be experiencing the novel's events as the pages turn, the characters in Cat’s Cradle are not. The narrative we are reading is Jonah’s retelling of these events as they occurred in his own life. This removed frame of narrative is fact interspersed with Jonah’s personal commentary, generally in the form of hindsight; for example, as he introduces the story we are reading through discussing the story he was writing (a prime example of metatextuality, right on the first page) he laments the notion that he “would have been a Bokonist then…but [it] was unknown” (Vonnegut 2). Because the supposedly factual narrative of Cat’s Cradle’s events is interspersed with Jonah’s own sentiments, it becomes masked by another layer of possible dishonesty – told through a lens of feigned truth clouded by personal biases. Cat’s Cradle, then, becomes Vonnegut’s story of Jonah’s story about how he went about writing his own story, The Day the World Ended – fiction written through Jonah’s fact-and-fiction narrative about the real “truth,” the actual events occurring in the novel.

            This idea of layering of fiction over fact continues in Supernatural’s “The Monster at the End of this Book.” In this episode, the lives the Winchester brothers believed they themselves controlled became mere stories, fiction penned by a writer named Chuck Shurley – later exposed as a prophet of God. In this case, Sam and Dean were living a life that was actually fiction, penned by a writer whose own reality was revealed to be controlled by an even higher power – a god spinning fiction (fate) from his own ideas, “writing” the roles for these characters to play.

            This additional aspect blurring fact and fiction exists in Cat’s Cradle as well, in the novel’s other instance of metatextuality, Jonah’s repeated discussion of the book that governs his life: The Book of Bokonon. Both Chuck Shurley and Bokonon are mortal men, but have a distinctive, deep connection to a higher power – and both men serve to blur the line between fact and fiction in their ability to control the fates of the Winchester brothers and Jonah, respectively. Each of these characters believes that their actions, their thoughts, their feelings, and the consequences that come of the three are what forge their own reality. However, this notion of life’s apparent “truth” is shattered when the puppeteers who actually spin these characters’ fates are revealed. The Winchester brothers cannot make decisions that go against Chuck's writing, and Jonah himself admits that "God Almighty had some pretty elaborate plans for me" (69), repeatedly believing that the events in his life (meeting members of his karass on the plane, having his vin-dit in the graveyard) are direct results of his destiny, weaved by God, "as it was supposed to happen" (84), as Bokonon would have said. All of this raises the question: is the life these characters know truly reality, or does the notion of fate establish life as fiction, the Earth’s inhabitants as vessels acting out the stories already written by a higher power?

Does Truth Matter?

Growing up with two scientists for parents, I was always told to question everything, to think critically, to always seek out the truth. From a young age, I felt as though I needed to understand everything around me. How did the microwave work? Why was the sky blue? This curiosity still lives within me, yet it has waned dramatically. I no longer care how the microwave heats my food, I only care that it is hot. Do I lack the ability to comprehend the world around me, or am I simply mature enough to accept that knowing the absolute truth is not essential in my life? While reading Cat’s Cradle, I saw these three distinct ways of approaching truth and knowledge in our world. First, there are the scientists, the seekers of truth, who inhabit a small, isolated world where research and the discovery of truth are viewed as the means to an ideal human existence. The remaining majority are the non-scientists, the people who believe, like I sometimes do, they lack the ability to comprehend the truth. Finally, there are the Bokonists, who dismiss the quest for truth altogether. Bokonists are not scientists, they do not spent hours seeking out truth, nor are they non-scientists, spending their lives in a clueless limbo, feeling hopeless to understand the scientist’s mind. Instead, they are content with their reality, understanding that the truth is not the key to humanity.

            In the minds of scientists, there are no unanswerable questions, no sense of limitation for discovery. They have convinced themselves that “the more truth we have, the richer we become” (41). It becomes evident, however, that gaining such knowledge does not bring us closer to the ideal society. New knowledge instead creates destructive forces, such as the atomic bomb and ice nine, that threaten humanity as a whole and create questions of morality that scientists fail to understand. The deeper scientific discovery takes them, the farther the scientists are taken from their own humanity. Just as my curious younger self would ask questions that could not be answered, the scientists are dealing with a world where truth cannot be found and one discovery only leads to more unsolvable concepts.

On the other side are the non-scientists, the everyday people who cannot comprehend the “truths” being discovered around them. Miss Pefko explained to Jonah that she used to be able to explain what happened in the laboratory, yet when asked now, she can only respond with “I dunno…” (34). A clear divide exists and is rapidly widening between the scientists and non-scientists as they approach the concept of truth and knowledge. The hostility is shown especially strong in the secretaries, who “hate anybody who thought too much” (33). The non-scientists are told the truth is important, yet they are given no way to find it. They are lost in the world at the mercy of the scientists’ minds.

Unlike the rest of humanity, the Bokonists are content with their ignorance of the truth. Instead of feeling as if they are missing the truth, they can live happily knowing its absence does not affect them. They understand that truth and lies are interchangeable and irrelevant concepts. I realized after reading this section of Cat’s Cradle that my view is actually a combination of these three distinct mindsets. I do not seek out the answer to every question on earth and I do not feel lost and isolated when an answer cannot be found. I can see the situation, and realize that the truth, all by itself, is not always necessary for my happiness. 

Discovering the "truth"

As I began this novel, I instantly began to tear through each sentence searching for the implicit lies. I questioned every detail that Jonah narrated including the seemingly meaningless descriptions. I was struggling to find blatant deception when I realized that that was the problem. There was not going to be blatant deception. When Jonah arrives on the island of San Lorenzo, he is told that it is "a Christian country” (137). If this were true however, then the citizens would be aware of the terrible environment that they are living in. Instead, the island is full of devote Bokononists who have created lies that make their environment bearable. Vonnegut writes to illustrate how the lies in our lives flow through it so seamlessly that they inherently become the truths. We have trained ourselves to accept them at face value, because it is easier to accept a comforting lie than an unsettling truth. At face value, San Lorenzo is Christian. Once one delves a little deeper though, they can begin to see Bokonon as the central religion. The most intriguing part of the book for me has been how enjoyable it is to read when I stop aggressively analyzing every line. When I accept the story for what it is and nothing more, I instantly sink into a state of comfort and familiarity. This seems to demonstrate Vonnegut’s point. No one wishes to believe that they are living in an untrustworthy world or in my situation, reading an untrustworthy text.

As a disclaimer at the beginning of the book, it states, “nothing in this book is true”. Vonnegut is the voice behind that narration, because Jonah has not even been introduced yet. That line on its own became troubling as I began to read because of how subjective the truth can be. There are times when we are presented with a factual truth that cannot be disputed. On the other hand, there are unsound truths that are easily debatable. These “truths” deal more heavily with emotions rather than concrete evidence. Vonnegut delves more freely into these truths because they more often become a comforting lie. Angela Hoenikker is a remarkable portrayal of this idea. She was the primary caretaker of both her father and her younger brother. After her father’s death, that was the only role that she knew how to be in life. She continued to be a parental figure for Newt even when he became old enough to take care of himself. It is comforting for Angela to believe that she must serve as this role rather than face the fact that she is not needed anymore.