Dejavu, It Happened Again

As I was reading the Cat’s Cradle, I found that many of the duos/couples within the book seemed to have a pattern of opposites. For one, the remarkable difference between Angela Hoenikker and her youngest brother Newt. In terms of physical appearance, Angela is described to be rather tall while; her younger brother is the exact opposite, a midget. Another example I found was Felix and his wife. I am not 100% if Felix is actually unattractive, but according to Newt’s description, he had a rather large and ugly face. On the contrary, Emily Hoenikker was described as being absolutely gorgeous.

            Another idea that really jumped out at me was in the letter that Newt had sent to Jonah. It was the part where Newt was describing his father, Felix. On the day that the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, Newt describes his father trying to show Newt Cat’s Cradle with a string that he had obtained from the manuscript of a novel called 2000 A.D. The book is described to be about scientists that make a bomb that demolished the world. At that point, the author basically had me assuming that Felix had read this book and probably was sort of inspired to do his job in helping create the atomic bomb. However, as history has a tendency to repeat itself, the writer tricks me as Newt goes on to say “My father never read the book”. When I read this I was absolutely shocked as it was dejavu of the An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge where the writer manipulates readers into thinking one thing and ends up being something completely different from what is expected.