Jonah's Cradle

In class we focused on the phrase Bokononists say right before they commit suicide: “now I will destroy the whole world” (238). This quote applies to Jonah’s story as it fits into the template of the hero’s journey. As soon as Jonah seizes power, and ascends the throne both metaphorically and physically to the “uppermost battlement of the castle” (226), the glamour of ruling San Lorenzo starts to fade for him. Jonah’s reached the end of his quest. He has an entire island to rule, and will marry Mona, the woman he’s been lusting for since arriving in San Lorenzo. Despite Jonah’s incredulity that it was so easy for him to become President of San Lorenzo, the island seems lackluster now that it’s his. He says, “I looked out at my guests, my servants, my cliff, and my lukewarm sea” (226).

Jonah is free to stop striving and let his fingers to slacken on the Cat’s Cradle. As he does that, the world ends, just as a real cradle would fold. At the moment his hero’s journey is completed, at the moment he stops working to progress, what he’s won seems less worthwhile than before. The world ends both because it can’t keep moving without a desire for progress, whether that progress is “true” or constructed, and also because it is no longer necessary to serve as a backdrop to Jonah’s story. Jonah, as the author, has the fate of the world in his hands. Without the previous tension inside him (lust for Mona and desire for power), the Cat’s Cradle can’t exist. Now that Jonah’s written all he wants of the story, he can become complacent and allow the ice-nine to creep in.