I love when books start with some
kind of quote at the beginning, before the story really begins. It gives me
some kind of indication of where the book is going before a character is even
introduced. On the page before the table of contents, Vonnegut starts by saying
“Nothing in this book is true”. My first thought was that this was obvious
considering Cat’s Cradle is a work of
fiction. But then I wondered if it’s actually the narrator—John—saying that the
whole story he is telling is not actually true. It certainly makes sense
considering the random coincidences that John encounters as he attempts to
gather information for his book. For instance, when the cab driver takes a
detour and John ends up talking to a man that just so happens to be Dr. Breed’s
brother, or when he opens the newspaper and sees a picture of the elusive and
thought-to-be-dead Frank Hoenikker, or when he’s on the plane to San Lorenzo and
Angela and Newt Hoenikker just so happen to be on the same plane. Even for a
work of fiction all of these instances are difficult to believe, at least for
me. Those kinds of coincidences don’t just happen in life; it’s not that
convenient. This beginning line is also a parallel to the Book of Bokonon. The
narrator tells us that the first line of the Book of Bokonon is “All of the
true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies” (Vonnegut 5). I find it
interesting that the beginning of Cat’s
Cradle and the beginning of the Book of Bokonon start in such similar ways.
Following the line about lies is a
quote from the Book of Bokonon, the made-up religion in Cat’s Cradle. The quote says “Live by the foma that make you brave
and kind and healthy and happy”. At the bottom of the page it says that ‘foma’
are ‘harmless untruths’. I took this to mean that there is some value that can be
found in lies, and we should live by those lies if they make us better off. Maybe
this is the narrator saying that although nothing about the story is true, they
are the untruths he lives by in order to make himself better off. Somehow this
story is his ‘foma’.
So right away we are told we are being lied to. Someone is being very truthful about the lies.
Yes! I had the same feelings when I first started the book. I was not sure if the author was talking about the story he was about to tell or if it was just a matter of the book being unreal because it’s fictional. The writer clearly leads readers into both as shown by the examples given above. Also, similar to what Professor Shwartz said, the quotes that the writer adds in throw off readers in the validity of the text.
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