Cat's Cradle

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Kurt Vonnegut is not exactly a familiar name when it comes to the impact left upon a modern reader's psyche; inquire about him and you get either blank stares, or, at the most, a mumbled response about how Slaughterhouse-Five wasn't half bad. And yet, if one were to look through the dusty annals of the twentieth century, they'd find Vonnegut among the few people who captured the essence of their times without making it look difficult.

The subject of this review first came out in 1961, a time when the Cold War was gathering momentum and the world was in very real danger of nuclear destruction. It is appropriate, then, that the central plot point in Cat's Cradle is a crystalline compound called ice-nine that can freeze all the water upon earth in seconds.It is created as a lark by one of the men who invented the Atom Bomb; after his death, his three children divide the compound among themselves. The novel follows the exploits of Jonah, a cynical novelist, as he searches a remote Caribbean island for the crystals. Woven into the plot are the teachings of Bokononism (a fictitious religion practiced by the people on the island) and a multitude of deftly-woven characters that bring out the undercurrent of madness that runs through our lives.

Cat's Cradle deals with the colossal magnitude of human folly, and the dangers of progress for the sake of progress. Along the way it deals out insight into love, hate and religion, among other things. Vonnegut's acerbic wit inspires no laughter except for the hysterical kind; the humor is served pitch black. But along the way we get a look at the landscape of those times... A bleak portrait, but a riveting one nonetheless.

Of special mention is the ingenuity of the story itself: the plot hums along at a steady pace, retaining its flow even as the narrator sets off on frequent tangents to point out the attractions there. The novel is compact (like most of Vonnegut's other works) but one doesn't feel short-changed at the end; the conclusion is surprising without being abrupt, and the final lines linger on long after the novel itself.

<quotation snipped to avoid spoilers.>

During the latter half of his career,Vonnegut wrote an autobiographical collage called Palm Sunday. Amongst its interesting (if haphazard) contents was a report card saying how he ranked his works with respect to one another. Slaughterhouse-Five was one of the books he'd given an A+.

Cat's Cradle was the other.

In fact, the University of Chicago (which had earlier dismissed Vonnegut's master's thesis as frivolous) awarded him his degree on the merit of this novel, which they felt was an apt analysis of the human condition. And while that endorsement might not lend too much credence to the novel, it is certainly a reminder that this book is more relevant than your average piece of fiction.

I remembered The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon, which I had read in its entirety the night before. The Fourteenth Book is entitled, "What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?" It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period. This is it: "Nothing."