Falling Into The Trap

In the epigraph of Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, it says "Nothing in this book is true." This seemed like a red flag to me, screaming He's trying to confuse you, Lily! I wanted to untangle it almost automatically. I thought about it. First I needed to decide what the "book" really encompassed. If the book included the epigraph, could I trust even that statement? If the epigraph is not true either, is it fully or only partially false? The more I thought about it, the more I got tangled up. It was impossible because there was no answer. 

These first few thoughts at the start of the book, I found, tied into Bokononism. According to Jonah, Bokononism does not warn against trying to understand the meaning behind God's will, because "such investigations are bound to be incomplete" (4). Trying to discover the reasons behind your actions will only frustrate you and cause you to feign understanding. He explains why the Episcopalian lady in Newport was a fool because she pretended to understand. What I found interesting was that following this Jonah said, "Be that as it may, I intend in this book to include as many members of my karass as possible, and I mean to examine all strong hints as to what on Earth we, collectively, have been up to" (5). Although he understood the folly of trying and of faking, he was just as easily falling into the trap he already understood was there. I thought this was possibly hinting at the human tendency to try to understand, no matter if you know it is futile. I had gone through the same thing.