Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut
Pages – 205
Published -1963
“When I was a younger man – two wives ago, 250000 cigarettes ago, 3000 quarts of booze ago …When I was a much younger man, I began to collect material for a book to be called ‘The Day the World Ended.’ The book was to be factual.”
This unbosoming by the narrator at the very outset metaphorically foreshadows the tone and tenor of what follows. A foreboding of doom (end of world) ; despairing, brooding pessimism about mankind's capacity to foresee and temper possible negative fallouts and unintended consequences of ‘progressive’ developments ( ice nine that could freeze swamp water to unbreakable ice could freeze oceans too) is scarcely relieved by mordant wit, satire and humour pulsating throughout the narrative. The wish to write a factual account of the day world ended is Vonnegut’s damning condemnation of the manner in which worldly affairs are conducted. It borders perilously close to playfulness, he feels. The sole diversion of Dr Felix Hoenikker , the maker of ‘ice nine’ that brings the curtains down on the world, is making ‘cat’s cradle’ - string figures with his fingers tangled in a loop of string. Vonnegut also has a stab at the malefic use of religion as an opiate for the destitute.
The tiny island of San Lorenzo in the Caribbean sea ruled by a dictator nicknamed ‘Papa’ is a yucky fantasia. The land is as ‘unproductive as an equal area in Sahara or the polar ice cap’. So the masses live in utter destitution. The native religion, Bokononism’ canonizes 'better and better lies', presumably, to fatalize the incurable mass misery and oppression by the state. It is on this island when the principal characters of the novel are assembled for the public commemoration of ‘Hundred Martyrs for Democracy’ by the ‘Dictator’ Pa that the end of world is triggered.
The book parades an interesting cast of characters, some bearing a ring of familiarity with contemporary figures of the 50s - 60s. Pa clones Duvalier; the island's tutelary sex goddess carries a whiff of Eva Peron ; Dr Koenigewald recalls Auschwitz physician Mengele ; Dr Felix Hoenikker, the maker of atomic bomb reminds one of Oppenheimer.
Characterization is brilliant, each character invested with distinct idiosyncracies and histories as befitting a dystopian conception. The narrative is free flowing, pacy and suspenseful. The train of events unfold quickly and linearly. Despite the overarching cloud of gloom and predestination hovering over the narrative the reader remains deeply immersed and rooted.
About the author - Vonnegut is cast in the mould of the counterculture sweeping the USA in 50s-60s. To be a non-conformist was the in thing. Music was not orchestral symphony but Rock. In literary works it erupted as spontaneous prose. Hippies, peaceniks and other disaffected types particularly took to Vonnegut. The rock band ‘Grateful Dead’ even named its music publishing company ‘Ice Nine’.
The novel’s despondent note is understandable, for it was written in the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, a raging cold war, an ugly scramble for atomic weaponization, and a looming threat of nuclear proliferation to rouge states and organizations.
The bogey of a nuclear holocaust has drifted away somewhat through a ‘Balance of Nuclear Terror’, but the world remains poised on a precipice of ‘dynamic tension’ , inherently an 'unstable equlibrium'. There are other perturbations equally portentious too for an end of world scenario. Vonnegut’s pessimism is, therefore, still not easy to wish away. Old fears may have only transfigured into new bugbears.
To end, a wry wit to wit, "the people down here are poor enough, scared enough, and ignorant enough to have some common sense!"
A crispy, queasy, easy, wacky, satire, immensely amusing and thoughtful. Notwithstanding the melancholic theme the novel is anything but tenebrous.
