Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Is ice-nine the gun in the first act?

When discussing An Occurrence at Owl Creek, we mentioned the idea that if a gun is introduced in the first act, it must go off in the second. In Cat’s Cradle, is ice-nine the gun? Vonnegut first introduces ice-nine as a concept that Dr. Hoenikker mentioned to a General as a way for marines to solidify mud, allowing them to walk across it with ease. It is later revealed to the reader that this substance exists and is in the possession of Dr. Hoenikker’s children, Angela and Newton. Is this substance a gun that must go off? When talking to Dr. Breed, Jonah concludes that ice-nine would end life on earth, making its existence all the more terrifying.


To add to the speculation, Jonah tells us early on that the title of his book, which he never finished, was The Day the World Ended. It seems peculiarly coincidental that in the process of writing a book entitled, The Day the World Ended, he encountered a substance that would end the world. Additionally, why did he never finish the book? Could it be because the world ended? Does this make our ‘gun,’ the ice-nine, more likely to go off? These questions are merely speculative and cannot, and perhaps should not, be answered, but they do demonstrate the way Vonnegut toys with his readers. The book is layered with narrators, from each individual Jonah speaks with, to Jonah himself, up to Vonnegut. Each layer of narration touches on the concept of the word ending. At the outer most layer is Vonnegut, weaving characters, storylines, and concepts together throughout the numerous tales that are told in the book.

5 comments:

  1. I think this is a really interesting and very plausible guess. Jonah brings up ice-nine frequently throughout the book, placing great importance on this substance. To be honest, as I was reading I did not catch the irony of the power of ice-nine and the title of the book, The Day the World Ended. I am still confused as to why the book is titled as so. There are several different possibilities of what the title of the book could entail. Although the world did not actually end, The Day the World Ended may very well be a metaphor for the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan. The "end" could symbolize a new beginning. It could also represent the day he became a Bokononist and abandoned Christianity. I think the ice-nine being the gun that is introduced in the first act is a very good guess. Then again, Vonnegut tells us that "nothing in this book is true" and Jonah tells us that everything in his story includes shameless lies. So, does it even matter what the title means? Perhaps nothing happens to the world. He is, in fact, telling us the story from an older perspective.

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  3. *SPOILER ALERT*

    Having finished the book, it would seem that you called it, Dan. To be honest, I think that Vonnegut's second act entirely is a commentary on the irresponsibility of mankind when it comes to apocalyptic power. In Vonnegut's book's character Bonkonon's Fourteenth Book of Bokonon (so meta, right?), the cynical way that our narrator, whoever he may be, feels about mankind is clear: we're fucked. In my opinion, Ice-Nine is just a compound so indisputably dangerous that only an insane person would release it on the world, and yet four separate Hoenikkers did it in four separate ways, consequences be damned. Then, BOOM, end of the world, just like that.

    *edit: added SPOILER ALERT.

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  4. To me, the concept of the introduction of a gun signifying that it must later go off in the story seems very believable. In this book, the characters and narrative voices are so overlapped that the clarity of whether or not there actually will a be a conclusion to the initial set-off is somewhat more muddled than it was in Owl's Creek.

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  5. To me, the concept of the introduction of a gun signifying that it must later go off in the story seems very believable. In this book, the characters and narrative voices are so overlapped that the clarity of whether or not there actually will a be a conclusion to the initial set-off is somewhat more muddled than it was in Owl's Creek.

    ReplyDelete