Anyways, I did the thing again where I mark what stands out to me when I read. Since I’m reading “Cat’s Cradle” for the first time right now, I’ll comment as I go along until I break the word number requirement.
I guess I’m trying to find lies within the story, and the first one I spotted was how the main character introduced himself on the first page. Is his name Jonah or John? This is still bothering me but I guess I’ll call him Jonah. Also Bokononism is not a real thing and I’m embarrassed that I had to google that. Along the lines of Bokononism is where I think I identified what I assumed is a main theme of this novel: “Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.” If I have this right, which I probably don’t, then thanks for the heads up, Vonnegut. The next lie I spotted was that Zinka is actually 42 and not 23, but I don’t know if there’s any significance behind this yet. I could go on and on about what’s tripping me up but I feel like we’ll talk about that in class eventually.
To finish this off, I tried approaching this novel with a “metatextual” state of mind, and I’m not sure if it worked or not. I kept trying to find parallels between characters and the author, or a hint of the author’s life inserted within the story itself. Sam posted about this sort of thing earlier and I think he put it into better words than I can come up with right now, so check that out.
The idea of names being true or false caused me to reconsider the other names that appear throughout the novel. Namely, Hoenikker. Now, I had to look this up, but there is NOT a Hoenikker that contributed to the development on the atomic bomb. In fact, after checking Facebook, I'm convinced Hoenikker isn't a real last name at all. That result caused me to wonder if there are any implications or meanings attached to this created name, like there were with Jonah. Some brief searching led me to an article in a journal called "The Explicator" which someone discussed the possibility of Hoenikker being pronounced in similar way as "Hanukkah", and the various implications of that association. I'm not entirely sure I buy this association, though some of the conclusions do make sense, such as the opposites of the Hoenikker/Hanukkah gifts. Hoenikker's gift is unending ice, whereas the Hanukkah story relates to unending flame. I think the possibility exists that Vonnegut intended this, though it may be a stretch. Given that one of the novel's central topics is religion, perhaps this interpretation is not as far-off as I had initial thought.
ReplyDeleteHere is a link to the abstract of the article I read: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00144940.1979.9938581?journalCode=vexp20#.VNQC9p3F8xQ