Vonnegut wrote this novel to highlight the balance between rational, scientific thought and
irrational, religious thought that man needs to live. The novel hints at it in many ways, from the
explanation of the planned dictatorship of San Lorenzo, to small nuances such as the
criticism of the game cat's cradle, and the irony of the warning to children in the wax museum. While Vonnegut could have ended the book with Mona and John in the shelter, he decided to add chapters to the book so he could expose the dynamic tension, front and center.
After Mona commits suicide, John finds his karass, and through his life with them, the reader can observe Vonnegut's idea on dynamic tension. On the rational side, you have ants who survive by murdering
each other and committing cannibalism. On the irrational side, you have the
"surviving" members of San Lorenzo, who escaped without pain, but
were nevertheless dead. And right in the middle is the author’s karass, alive
and satisfied; using logic to survive in the new, while clinging to the trappings of a society passed.
Again this paradigm of either side is repeated in
the Hoenikker family. Frank is enraged by the pointlessness of his
science but refuses to give into irrational thought, while Angela dies happy,
because she refuses to understand the reality of the situation. Newt, the last
Hoenikker, is able to both survive and feel content by following Bokononism. These clear examples of dynamic tension both highlight the bleak lifestyle of a rational thinker, and the ignorant life of an irrational one. The only man who survives whole is the one who recognizes the current situation, yet accepts certain beliefs that allow him to stay content.
I really like your discussion on dynamic tension. After class today, I realized the significance of the tension needed to play cat's cradle and how that is intertwined into the lives of the Hoenikker children. It's interesting that this sting that creates dynamic tension is almost a metaphor for this differences between Angela, Newt, and Frank. I've often found myself thinking "ignorance is bliss," but is that really the case? I know that we remember childhood, a time filled with naiveté, as a happy time in ones life, but does an acceptance of reality really make us unhappier? According to the book, none of us are exactly certain of reality and we all perceive it differently due to the white lies we tell ourselves daily. How can we recognize our current situation and accept certain beliefs at the same time? At the end of the day aren't we, like all the characters in Cat's Cradle, ultimately lying to ourselves? After all, if we lie to ourselves so frequently, how can we be sure about anything?
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