People die and it is sad. I know, what a cliche and simple way to put it, but it's true. Yet, in this text it seems that people matter more when they are dead or when they create death than when they are actually alive or carrying about their normal lives. When Jonah first sets foot onto San Lorenzo he describes the scene as, "Five thousand or more San Lorenzans stared at us. The islanders were oatmeal colored. The people were thin. There wasn't a fat person to be seen. Every person had teeth missing. Many legs were bowed or swollen" (Vonnegut, 136). These people are obviously starved and needing of help, but they hold very little significance to us as readers. That is, until they are dead. When the San Lorenzans die in a mass suicide brought on by Bokonon they achieve meaning. We see that this population of starving people become an example of the mercy of death. On the island, the population was in constant suffering, but in death they are peaceful. They are no longer being shammed into life because there are no lies in death.
The character who, I think, is the most central to the concept and relationship of death in this novel is Dr. Hoenikker. With his creations, both the atom bomb and ice-nine, he paves the road for Jonah to experience this Armageddon. He also is a connecting factor between science and religion. The end of the world is usually thought of in a biblical sense; Judgement Day. Dr. Hoenikker, though, paves the road for this with science. Through his creation of mass death he bridges the gap between religion and science in this one awful truth; death. Now, I'm not saying that all science or religion have to offer is death, but it is what connects them in this novel. Bokonon brings on the death of the San Lorenzeans through religion and Dr. Hoenikker brings on the death of millions through science. Death, my friends, is the common denominator.
Another point I found interesting about death in Cat's Cradle is how little anyone seems to care about it. There is very little emotion from any of the characters about mass deaths or even the deaths of their family members. Nobody in the text is particularly moved by the frozen, San Lorenzans; the narrator can't even wish them alive. When the narrator writes the Hoenikker children about the day the bomb dropped in the beginning, destruction is hardly mentioned. Newt tells a story about how ugly his father is, and when Angela finally gets around to talking about it, she only wants her father to be praised as a visionary, with no regard to his role in the decimation of thousands of people.
ReplyDeleteBut so it goes.