We may, and likely won't ever know if Cat’s Cradle is in fact the book of Bokonon, but does it even
matter? Bokonon is a lie, a beautiful lie woven by a man who called himself
Bokonon, just as Cat’s Cradle is a
false tale spun by a man who calls himself Jonah but is actually John who is
controlled by an external force who deceives professionally. Bokonon is merely
an idea, a theoretical persona that can be adopted by multiple people and
professed by those who seek a simple solution to a complex conundrum. The Books
of Bokonon were created in the same fashion as Jonah’s work, a constructed
reality from a constructed figure designed to lessen the misery of life. The
debate over the true author of the Books is a lie, representing the focus of
many on the lies being told rather than truth that may or may not exist within
the text.
On a physical level, Cat’s
Cradle is a book of Bokonon, volumes one through the finish. Bokonon exists
only as a Kurt Vonnegut’s manifestation of human absurdity and thus as
Vonnegut’s creation, Cat’s Cradle draws
from the same cynical muse and by default, so does Jonah.
I entirely agree with you and wrote my blog post on something similar to this. The question of whether or not it even matters seems to be at the core of this novel. We are told at the very beginning that the book is nothing but lies; however, throughout the rest of the novel, we are told that other things are lies, and we know that this book is fiction. Even though it becomes extremely confusing while reading the text, and this definitely seems deliberate, the message may simply be that it does not matter what is labeled as a lie or not. The definition of a lie becomes cloudy throughout this novel, and I believe that that is the point. As you mentioned, human absurdity is portrayed in Cat's Cradle, and we as readers are drawn into this cycle and forced to question our own beliefs.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree - the terrifying part about the book is that, not only do we question our beliefs, we question whether that determination matters. Vonnegut mocks the ignorance of belief through his descriptions of Bokononism, but by the end of the book, the alternative doesn’t sound great either. We have to choose whether to go on a never-ending, and futile, quest for the truth, or to live our lives by blind faith (i.e, foma).
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