It IS fiction, but is it all a lie?

As I was reading Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, a flood of questions suddenly entered my mind: Is any of this true? Is Bokononism a real belief in our world? Was there really a Dr. Hoenikker who took part in the creation of the atom bomb? So I opened up Google Chrome and did a little research. The research did not take more than 3 minutes as the answers all came up the same. No, none of this really exists or existed in our world. Then I realized "Oh yeah, this is fiction." My curiosity should have stopped there but for some reason I was not satisfied.

I began thinking about Bokononism and the numerous references the narrator makes to the fictitious religion. I realized then that perhaps a reason as to why the author created this religion was to keep the readers open minded throughout the story. In the very beginning of the book the narrator says "Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either"(6). From what I gathered, the main principle of Bokononism is to have a purpose beyond our own, such as the will of God. Like the religion Bokononism, we as readers shouldn't solely rely on our own knowledge of truth as there may be a greater purpose.

A few examples that struck me were "I just have trouble understanding how truth, all by itself, could be enough for a person" (54), "Well done, Mr. Krebbs, well done" (79), and "If you wish to study a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon" (92). The first quote is a lesson to us and illustrates how we cannot focus only on our own truths. We should not be blinded by our own preconceptions and truths because like the balloon in the third example, things are not always what they seem. As readers, we should be open to anything in the book, as absurd as it may be. The narrator even believes that a strange man such as Mr. Krebbs, who tore the narrator's apartment apart, did those things for a reason. Although the book is fiction, does that mean it has no truth to it? Bokononism does not exist in our world but perhaps it can expose a something worthwhile for the readers. There is definitely a greater truth that that lies in this piece of literature and to find it we must think beyond the reality and truths we have lived in. 

Tbh I'm not sure I understand this

I started off by looking up what a cat’s cradle actually is, because I thought it was just a cool knot or something made with string. It’s actually a game that requires 2 or more people, and you basically take turns messing with the string to try and make a figure. I’ll keep that in mind while reading this my first time around.

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.

No Cares and Indiana

Something that jumped out to me in Cat’s Cradle, is that no one in the Hoenikker family seems to care about anything. In Newt’s letter to John, Newt talks about everything from his rejection from school to the death of his father without seeming to care much about any of it. He only throws in a tidbit about being married soon at the end, and even still does not place much emphasis on it. Newt’s father seems to follow this as well by not showing love for his children, or for his work. He began to perform research on turtles simply on a whim. Newt’s brother was a genius at making models, but according to the owner of the model shop he never pursued anything else. He wasn’t interested in girls, movies, cars, or his family. Also, while their sister intensely cared for their father, she didn’t do anything else.

On a different note, I noticed that Vonnegut seems to bring himself into the book on multiple occasions. He brings in many characters from the midwest and especially from Indiana, where he is from, and where John is from. The Hoenikker’s (Newt and his sister) move to Indianapolis, and the couple on the plane live in Indiana. He also represents his own dark sense of humor in the religion of Bokononism.

Folly of Trying to Understanding Lies

After watching and talking about the episode of Supernatural, I became very aware of the framed narrative and the strong presence of the narrator. As I began reading Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle,  I was conscious of the idea of this meta-narrative. From the very first page, the narrator is very open with the reader. The narrator develops a relationship with the reader right away, by telling us to call him Jonah. He, then, starts to talk about a book he wrote called The Day the World Ended, noting that, "the book was to be factual. The book was to be an account of what important Americans had done ... It was to be a Christian book" (Vonnegut, 1). For some reason, the repeated emphasis of what the book "was" supposed to be reminded me of what was supposed to happen to the two brothers, Dean and Sam.

Many things that Jonah confesses to in the beginning of Cat's Cradle made me suspicious about what type of narrator he was going to be. Another line that stood out to me was when Jonah talked about, "the folly of pretending to discover, to understand" in the section of The Books of Bokonon (4). Although it is probably not directed to us, it sounded as if Jonah was saying it would be stupid if we tried to understand what he was about to tell us. Because Jonah is so open and straightforward about his intentions for this book, it gives the reader comfort to read on and semi-trust the narrator. Even though he begins the book by admitting that, "All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies," the stories he tells us do not seem so implausible (5).

As I kept reading, I started to read for the story. I did not continue to be skeptical of the narrator and was merely reading for the story-line or the plot. So far, there have been many events that have relied too much on coincidence. It would be very difficult to travel from place to place and always encounter someone who is connected with Felix. Although there are many instances where I can feel that the narrator is lying or that the story is not true, I have not been shocked or surprised like I have with An Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge or Supernatural. I feel as if I am just waiting to be proven a fool by Jonah, who has clearly told us that everything he is going to tell us is a lie.

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.

Take Me To Church, You Self-Indulgent Son of A Bitch

The manipulation: the assignment of reading 148 pages over 6 winter days. Information retention, as such, barely keeps up with the flu season. Note-taking is therefore implicitly recommended, leading to immersion into the world created by Vonnegut and over which he has total control. Tendency to connect people, events, places, to map out a chronological order of this world, to make sense of it, to detect narrative paradoxes and plot holes is therefore extremely high. This then runs  us right into the trap which Bokononism observed but never warned: we the readers are trying to discover, to understand, to seek after a ‘truth’ that lies underneath a world of a fabrication, a world that is spoon-fed to us in a pseudo-chronological order (with the help of flashbacks and recollections of events). Vonnegut plays with us like Felix plays with the Cat’s cradles. He spoon-feeds us information like Felix spoon-feeds his knowledge of ice-nine to those around him. Kurt Vonnegut is one self-indulgent son of a bitch. He didn’t make an index of his book. But he might as well have. His way of leaving connected information all over the place alludes to the way one would flip back and forth between the index page and the many pages it keeps record of. I fell into this trap all the way through page 148. I felt enticed, to quote Hozier's religiously satirical song, to "worship like a dog in the shrine of [Kurt's] lies" Case in point, here’s one of my initial blog drafts before realizing this.

Page one, paragraph two: “...somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided…” (Vonnegut, p.1). Initially I interpreted this in the sense that Jonah registered a sense of resignation, that he recognized the parallel frameworks of both life and literature but fed up with the struggle against it. This later found support in Jonah’s description of how Bokononism, a made-up religion founded on the island of San Lorenzo, had applied to his life during his days as a Christian (the vindit of Mr. Krebbs, section 34-6). Also,on page 2, Jonah mentioned karass and kan-kan, two of the many Bokononist terms, to give us a sense of what such high calling can be perceived. The Day the World Ended, Jonah’s kan-kan, was never finished. A barely-finished instrument (possibly due to the fact that this is meant to be a factual but Christan book) brought our narrator into a team clueless of its purpose assigned by God ((Vonnegut, p. 2). Who, just who, is this God? Is he the same God as in the Bible?. Vonnegut, through the voice of Jonah, wants us to think so. First, in section 3, from the “parable on the folly of pretending to discover”, we know Bokonon was a carpenter. Jesus was also a carpenter. Later we would know Bokonon used to be a christened Lionel B. Johnson educated also in Episcopalian, the Christian sect mentioned in section 3. This begs the first comparison between Bokonon and Jesus. The contrast between Books of Bokonon and the Book of Common Prayers (dominantly used in Episcopalian sect) cemented this comparison/ contrast. Yes the fact that there are multiple Books hint at something rather interesting about Bokonon too (which ties nicely with the paradox of a banned religion whose recent books, related by Jonah to the readers, still keep up with contemporary events. See, for instance, the Bokonon poem about Mona, p.140).

Just one small speculative argument and already it eats up a blog post. But, as granfalloons of this college level class, the best way to learn is to fail, not to be warned (like the masses of nations trying to conquer San Lorenzo, section 57). Yet, I find myself struggling to fight against the long-conditioned urge to blow this blog post way out of proportion with textual speculations and extrapolations. And the cold doesn’t help either.

      Also, I took Hozier's lyrics out of context. The song, aside from attacking the many fallacies of Christianity like Vannagut did, focuses mostly on homosexuality, which in Vannagut's novel is reduced to a plot device (Vannagut, end of section 55).

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. 

Irony and Hypocrisy

Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Cat's Cradle, appears to be a story filled with irony, and dedicated to criticizing American social structures and political decisiveness. Vonnegut entirely bases the novel around a young man from Indiana, the narrator that desires to write a book about the day the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. While the narrator of the story wanders around the world tracking Felix Hoenikker's children his experiences and actions indirectly suggest belief in major hypocrisies extant within America. For example, when the narrator travels to the laboratory where Hoenikker worked to interview Dr. Breed and examine Hoenikker's private area the secretary of the laboratory decoratively hung banners that said "Peace on Earth" and "Good Will Toward Men." These banners directly exhibit irony because of the laboratory in which they are hung. This laboratory is where Felix Hoenikker developed the ultimate killing device, the atom bomb.

Vonnegut epitomizes irony by describing banners preaching peace and respect towards life in the laboratory where the atom bomb, the ultimate life destroyer, was first created. This irony also directly voices issues in American society and politics.

Vonnegut contextualizes the system that was in place when the atom bomb was dropped. By pointing out such blatant irony he directly sheds light onto the hypocrisy of the American social and political system. This irony speaks on a greater scale; a scale that is the size of America. Americans claim that they respect life and humanity through The Bill of Rights and The Constitution, but go ahead and drop a bomb on the hundreds of innocent civilians in Japan. The small-scalle irony depicted within the General Forge and Foundry Company speaks on a greater scale regarding American social and political structures.

Is there any peace of mind?

Besides the mediocre (to the point of entertainingly pathetic, I would argue) acting and wonderfully ludicrous plot line, Supernatural was like watching Matryoshka dolls hatch; the two main characters, Sam and Dean Winchester, are controlled by Chuck, their “prophet” writer, who is controlled by Eric Kripke, who also controls us, the audience. Like I said, Matryoshka dolls. This multi-layered web of control begs the audience to wonder: "do we write our own lives?" Some people turn to religion, believing their fate is controlled by a divine, omniscient power (God? Vonnegut’s Bokonon?), while others dismiss fate as if it were a piece of cat hair on their black clothing. In Supernatural, we see what it's like for Sam and Dean to not be in control of their day to day lives, and it's grim. Granted, I highly doubt a devil will ever try to kill me, but what about figurative demons? The longer we live, the more chances there are for (induced) depression to creep into our minds.

            In Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, John or “Jonah,” seems to suggest that Felix Hoenikker wrote (or rather, wrapped up) the destinies of the thousands of people who died in Hiroshima, and yet Jonah is now attempting to write Hoenikker’s life. It makes one wonder: can you write someone’s life, and be fully in control of it, after that life has ended? In Supernatural, Chuck wrote in the present about the present, while in Cat’s Cradle, Jonah is writing about the past in the present. Is Jonah a profit then, like Chuck, or simply a middleman sent to put the past to paper? Jonah’s role reminds me of Menard’s in Jorge Luis Borges, Pierre Menard, Author of the “Quixote.” Menard is striving to rewrite the Quixote itself. Jonah knows he cannot become Hoenikker, but that does not deter him from trying to write the man’s life.

            So who do we believe? Do we believe in Chuck or Jonah? The problem with a lie is that it can only be told while knowing the truth. If the truth is not known, then it is not a lie, but a misunderstanding, since there was no intentional scheming. We do not know who is the true narrator of our lives, but I’m (fiercely) hoping it’s me.

Useless Truths and Useful Lies

In the very beginning of Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, the narrator quotes the first sentence in The Books of Bokonon, stating "All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies." It was this first mention of the idea of lies that has colored my reading of the novel so far. The idea that something can be both true and a lie is something that has interested me since reading Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. Similar to O'Brien, Vonnegut offers examples of statements that, though the may not be factually correct, ring truer than statements that in fact are factually correct. The first example that I see of this in Cat's Cradle is on page twenty five, where the two people the narrator are drinking with discuss the "basic secret of life" as discovered by science. "'Protein,' the bartender declared. 'They found out something about protein.'" While protein might technically and factually be the basic secret to life, it offers less value or "truth", than some of the things stated by Bokonon, which can be seen as lies.

I'm not entirely sure where Vonnegut himself stands with respect to science as on display in this book While he did major in a science (Chemistry), the destructive consequences of scientific advancement can be seen throughout the book, with the use of the atomic bombs and the use of ice-nine. Though does the use of these weapons actually reflect any intrinsic destructiveness within science, or rather does it reveal the destructive nature of humanity that most of us would rather lie about and blame on science instead?

Terms and Conditions

“The first sentence in The Book of Bokonon is this: ‘All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.’ My Bokonist warning is this: Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either. So be it.” (Vonnegut, 5-6).

I had originally noted this quote because it had to do with lies, which is obviously very relevant. However, when I went back and re-read it, I found that there was more to this paragraph than I had originally thought. I actually found the last two sentences to be the most interesting part. This, I felt, was Vonnegut personally speaking to his readers through Jonah’s narration. I believe this may be a type of metanarrative and/or metatextuality. Vonnegut is giving us this warning very early on in the novel, on page 5. This warning reminds me of a “Please read and click Yes if you agree to the terms and conditions” or a “Are you sure you wish to continue with this transaction?” type of statement. I feel as if he is saying to his readers, ‘you can still turn back now if you’re not willing to accept the lies you will be enduring’. Vonnegut is saying to us that if we don’t understand how things, such as Bokonism, can be founded on lies, or how some things are just completely fictional, that we will not understand the novel Cat’s Cradle. He is implying that you need to read this book with a different perspective, or change your perspective if you haven’t already. I think he is saying that you need to have the perspective of still being able to find usefulness or meaning in something completely fiction. The “So be it”, as I see it, is Vonnegut being pretty apathetic or passive-aggressive to the fact that this book may not be understood by someone with the common reliance on truths.

I have some other jumbled thoughts on this theme, but I’m going to stop now while I’m still standing and my writing still makes a little bit of sense.

Which one is true?

Nothing I am about to write is true:

Secret Agent X-9, Ice-Nine and Asinine are three terms that sound very similar. Two of them appear in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, and for some reason they made me think of the third.

Vonnegut was a well known pacifist, and I think that the idea that Ice-Nine is asinine, meaning extremely stupid and foolish, is an example of his commentary on how certain advances in military technology went on to effect the world, specifically in the cases of dynamite and the atomic bomb.

Secret Agent X-9 is a name given to Frank Hoenikker by members of his high school class, and in the context of the interior of the book, at least up until page 148, means nothing. Why not B-7, or C-3? The same goes for Ice-Nine. Why is it the 9th version of ice that is so potent and dangerous? Although I am likely to be drawing lines that do not really exist, I think that Vonnegut chose these specific descriptors in order to draw the readers mind to a third word that they both sound similar to: asinine.

The idea that this new compound, Ice-Nine, is extremely stupid or foolish, seems to me like a commentary on the atomic bomb or of dynamite is because in all three cases, an advance in science that could lead to the betterment of the human race was used violently against it. In the case of dynamite, Alfred Nobel was interested primarily in advancing the technology that miners used in their jobs. When he watched as his invention was used to kill dozens of people at a time, it bothered him enough that he set up the Nobel Peace Prize. In the case of the nuclear bomb, a nuclear reaction could have been used to help bring clean energy, but it was instead used to kill hundreds thousands of people. And finally, in the case of the asinine Ice-Nine, the concept of an object that would turn all water it touched into ice with a melting point of one hundred and fourteen degrees Fahrenheit could quite easily bring a complete end to humankind, if improperly used.

The first sentence is not true.

Fate: a Double Sided Sword

Having never been exposed to the show Supernatural before, it came across to me as a surprisingly fresh take on the concept of "fate" and "predestination" that are so often thrown into the mix of fictional stories such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, or even Harry Potter. While all of these tales follow the theme that ones fate simply cannot be avoided, Supernatural really delved into how fate can have different interpretations as well as the idea that one does in fact have some sort of power over his own destiny. When Chuck tells Sam that he is doomed to be seduced by Lillith that night and thereby destroyed, both he and Dean are convinced that this gloomy fate is inevitable and cannot be reversed. However, as Sam continues to gain confidence in his own actions and decides to face Lillith instead of attempting to flee, the prediction is apparently reversed by Chuck's appearance and the conjuring of an archangel who destroys Lilllith. However, Liam's comment in class about how maybe Sam and Lillith's violent confrontation could be what the prophecy meant by "sinking into passion" and therefore fate did in fact prevail. This ambiguity of whether or not the root of the story is in favor or contra-to fate's role reminds me of the same sort of ambiguity that exists in An Occurrence at Owl Creek surrounding whether Peyton's vision is purgatorial or whether it actually occurs within the snapshot after his feet leave the bridge and before the noose tightens around his neck. 

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.

A Truthful Liar?

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.