Blurred Lines

Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried complement each other—one’s mechanisms for manipulation serve as a supplement to the other’s. Through Vonnegut’s insertion of the game cat’s cradle into his novel, and through O’Brien’s invention of stories as a construct for the Vietnam War, the authors help their readers grasp the benefits of “pretending to understand” in order to achieve a satisfying reality. Additionally, both authors employ metaphors for their textual subject matter and the fiction genre.

             The religion of Bokononism in Vonnegut’s novel acts as a platform for his emphasis on not over-thinking. The Bokononists on San Lorenzo live the only reality they know without questioning it, and are consistently contented. The principles by which they conduct themselves and the principles by which their world is run may seem like blatant lies, but they accept them as truths for their own benefit. Vonnegut makes clear that the search for the precise line between truth and lies, between fact and fiction, is futile because the line so often gets blurred; everything is inherently filled with “untruths,” and at the end of the search there is always, in Newt Hoenikker’s words about the children’s game, “No damn cat, and no damn cradle” (166). Thus, pretending is key—when reading fiction, just as when wrapping string around fingers to create a “cat’s cradle,” suspension of disbelief is a requirement.

            Similarly, Tim O’Brien’s writing stresses the trivialness of factual accuracy. He sends the message to the reader that it is impossible to seek out the truth, when meanwhile he is getting trapped and doing exactly that, which proves the message’s validity. The author shows his need to talk; he is continuously adding details to the stories in the text and getting more specific, he creates characters upon characters with intricate backgrounds, he creates himself as a narrator—all going to show how difficult it is for him to understand it, and how ultimately, he never will understand it. Consequently, pretending is the only way for Tim O’Brien, the author, to come to terms with his storytelling, to be satisfied. He fakes that the novel is about the Vietnam War, while Tim the narrator says candidly, “And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war” (81). The author uses war to represent the creation of life that was once lost to him, through fiction. The reader is made aware that fiction itself is only a conceptual idea, not necessarily based on evidence; O’Brien demonstrates, nonetheless, that the reader must allow himself or herself to get caught up in the fiction in order to acquire greater knowledge.