Cat's Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Cat’s Cradle, while being a novel, on the surface, of a man’s creation a super weapon with terrifying potential and its use, is a true commentary on blind belief in the logic of the sciences or in religions which are created for the sole purpose of control over populations in which they are implemented.
The most obvious of these symbols is the very creation of the carless Dr. Hoenniker, ice-nine. Ice-nine, as described the narrator and the characters that are knowledgeable of it, is the last creation of the father of the atomic age. Hoenniker, for the simple reason of being able to, created a weapon that could destroy, and would destroy, the world in a matter of moments. The god-like power of ice-nine is used as a symbol of science’s terrifyingly advancing rate and the proliferation of arms that is caused by the rapid acceleration of physical science and the carelessness of those who bring their destructive power to bear. This idea of reckless disregard for the horrifying might of these weapons is made evident through not only Dr. Hopenniker, but his children as well, each of his children were gifted a fragment of ice-nine, each of them relinquished a portion of it to world powers, in one way or another. The USSR and the United States both received a portion of it, during the height of the cold war arms race. And yet none of them seemed to care at all for the repercussions of this, not until the world’s oceans froze over and the ‘purple worms’ descended from the sky and tore what remained of the Earth to shreds. Until as was lost, they felt no remorse for their actions and Vonnegut’s use of this symbol is astounding.
“I recalled an advertisement for a set of children’s books called The Book of Knowledge. In that ad, a trusting boy and girl looked up at their father. ‘Daddy,’ one asked, ‘what makes the sky blue?’ The answer, presumably, could be found in The Book of Knowledge.
“If I had my daddy beside me as Mona and I walked down the road from the palace, I would have had plenty of questions to ask as I clung to his hand. ‘Daddy, why are all the trees broken? Daddy, why are all the birds dead? Daddy what makes the sky so sick and wormy? Daddy what makes the sea so hard and still?’ It occurred to me that I was qualified to answer those questions better than any other human being, provided there were other human beings alive.”
This passage, post the end of the world, at the hands of ice-nine, instills a feeling of loneliness and sadness in a reader. A feeling that man is truly lonely, that there is no one else to answer the great questions or even the small, nagging ones that can never be answered by any one but ourselves. The melancholy effect of such a passage makes one ask themselves, who, if not us, meaning human beings, will be there to ask such questions, to wonder, to think, to dream, of why the trees are broken.
I think that Vonnegut’s use of language and symbols in the novel are masterful. I enjoyed the symbolic nature of the book, finding his commentary on a rapidly advancing technological and logical society insightful and well-developed. However, the physical and concrete book was rather difficult to read. The style used by Vonnegut can become rather convoluted and difficult to follow, especially in his books such as Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five where the plot is not a sequence of events but rather a compilation of thoughts and ideas from the entire timeline of the novel. Overall, the book was a wonderful piece of literature.