While reading this book, I am trying to keep an open mind about the whole story being a lie. The somewhat pretext of the book states that “nothing in this book is true.” Therefore it is a challenge to fully get into the book and believe what the author is writing because I have this thought jabbing in the back of my mind saying don’t believe anything Vonnegut writes.
Everyone is a bokononist in this book... page 218 “papa” tells the doctor to leave his room because he is a christian. They don’t practice bokononism because they want to keep the power over the people. Page 265 the initial page of the First Book of Bokononism tries to tell the reader that the whole book is “foma.” harmless truths. This is similar to the opening of Cat’s Cradle. The whole book is lies. And when I say book, I am talking about the book within the book as well as the book we have read. Jonah has based his life around the lies of the Bokononism religion.
Vonnegut creates an interesting image of what the cat’s cradle technically is within the story. Newt drawing which Jonah saw as a disaster, was the image of a cat’s cradle. This is important in helping describe what a cat’s cradle is. In the beginning of the novel it was described as criss-crossing of lines and then Newt tries to explain to Jonah that those crossing lines creates a cat and a cradle.
These small little details Vonnegut uses try to bring the reader back to the beginning of the story. Brings back the idea of everything is false.
I too shared this feeling of distrust as I read Vonnegut’s novel. I felt as if I couldn’t believe anything he was saying. Now that we’ve finished the book and are beginning to understand Vonnegut’s message, it’s interesting to return to this feeling of distrust and what it ultimately means.
ReplyDeleteFirst, let’s establish one of Vonnegut’s central messages. Through Bokononism, a discussion of blind faith, and a dramatic illustration of the giant game both are a part of, Vonnegut shows us that all forms of organized belief and thought—science and religion in particular—are ultimately meaningless. They are merely the consequence of man’s eternal and instinctual need to find meaning in this world to cope with the terrible misery of daily life. These meanings and these beliefs, however, are ultimately synthetic. Bokononism shows us this, for it shows that man rather than God is the fabricator of its beliefs. Bokononism, therefore, is transformed from a religion into a representation of man’s willing belief in false meanings about the world in order to evade the realization of meaninglessness.
I think we can both agree on this. But let’s now consider this in the context of the pretext—that it’s all lies. As we allow our feelings of distrust to resurface, we find ourselves once again searching for the true meaning and whether our understanding of the novel is true. Yet in doing so, we merely fall into the very game Vonnegut has laid out before us because in the face of meaninglessness, we scavenge for another meaning, even if it’s a lie. We are compelled to mask the utter emptiness of our world. This, I suggest, is the central action of the book. We are forced to realize that our search for meaning is to no avail because none of it is ultimately purposeful. Thus, Vonnegut’s message pervades all levels of the novel, both the fictional world of Cat’s Cradle and the very real game of cat’s cradle that is our world. I urge you to hold onto your feelings of distrust because they hold to key to understanding one of the fundamental messages of Vonnegut’s book.