After reading a good
thirty-four chapters of this book, I can say that I am excited to once again
delve into one of Vonnegut’s classic adventures. His writing style is extremely
recognizable, and so far I’m enjoying Cat’s Cradle as much as I enjoyed
Breakfast of Champions. This book, like Breakfast of Champions,
is a “satirical commentary on modern man”
The story is told
through the perspective of a narrator who is a character in the story himself.
His name is John, or Jonah, and his story is about his journey writing a book
called “The Day the World Ended”. The book is about the development of
the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. While gathering research
for his book, John contacts Newt Hoenikker, son of scientist Dr. Felix Hoenikker.
Felix Hoenikker was one of the major contributors to the development of the
atomic bomb.
Throughout the
beginning of the book, we find out that the Hoenikkers are an extremely
troubled family. Felix is viewed by society as a harmless, gentle, and innocent
man, but in truth, he is a man so devoid of emotion and love that he has neglected
his wife and family. After his wife died, he had pulled his daughter, Angela,
out of high school so that he could “go on having some woman to take care of
him”. Throughout much of his life, Felix worked as a scientist in the General
Forge and Foundry Company under his supervisor, Dr. Asa Breed.
While visiting Dr.
Breed, John learns about a particularly fascinating substance called ice-nine. A
marine soldier had approached Felix one day with the problem of moving through swamps
and mud, to which Felix proposed the possible solution of ice-nine, a crystal
of water molecules in such an arrangement that the water became solid at room
temperature and all of the water it touched crystalized into ice-nine as well.
Under this idea, one tiny grain of ice-nine could theoretically “freeze” all of
the world’s connected water supplies within a brief moment. After some
discussion with Dr. Breed, it is clear to John that such a discovery, like the
atomic bomb, could pose catastrophic consequences for the entire world. Dr.
Breed claims that such a substance was merely theorized and never actually
created, but he is mistaken. Before he died, Felix had made a chip of ice-nine
and split it with his children. It had a melting point of
one-hundred-fourteen-point-four-degrees Fahrenheit. This means that if the
water in a human body were to ever crystalize into ice-nine, he would have to
be cooked past 114.4 degrees, effectively killing him, in order to be melted.
Through the creation of the atomic bomb and the fictional ice-nine, Vonnegut satirizes scientists and their quest for knowledge whilst disregarding the real-life consequences of such knowledge. Vonnegut proposes that scientists hold responsibility not only for truth, but also the moral implications of how that truth could be potentially used for good or bad. I’m not entirely sure that I agree with this point, because from my point of view, I believe that progress and discovery will happen anyway. The atomic bomb, for examples, utilizes nuclear fission to release massive amounts of nuclear energy. Such knowledge is so fundamental to physics and chemistry that its discovery and application would have been inevitable.
Through the creation of the atomic bomb and the fictional ice-nine, Vonnegut satirizes scientists and their quest for knowledge whilst disregarding the real-life consequences of such knowledge. Vonnegut proposes that scientists hold responsibility not only for truth, but also the moral implications of how that truth could be potentially used for good or bad. I’m not entirely sure that I agree with this point, because from my point of view, I believe that progress and discovery will happen anyway. The atomic bomb, for examples, utilizes nuclear fission to release massive amounts of nuclear energy. Such knowledge is so fundamental to physics and chemistry that its discovery and application would have been inevitable.