Like many of his other
works, Cat’s Cradle demonstrates Vonnegut’s mastery of satire and dark humor.
In this post, I’ll explore a couple of examples.
On the Island of San
Lorenzo, John is told that the “greatest national holiday” is The Day of the
Hundred Martyrs to Democracy. John inquires as to what the holiday actually celebrates:
The driver told me that San Lorenzo had declared war on Germany and Japan an hour after Pearl Harbor was attacked. San Lorenzo conscripted a hundred men to fight on the side of democracy. These hundred men were put on a ship bound for the United States, where they were to be armed and trained. The ship was sunk by a German submarine right outside of Bolivar harbor. “Dose, sore,” he said, “yeeara lo hoon-yera mora-toorz tut zamoo-cratz-ya.” “Those, sir,” he’d said in dialect, “are the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy.” (p.149)
In this example of dark
humor, John learns that San Lorenzo’s greatest national holiday is a
celebration of its most abysmal military failure. Of course, Vonnegut also has
a deeper satirical purpose in questioning our automatic respect for those who
have “died in service”. In the above passage, the hundred men didn’t save any
lives, defeat any enemies, or do anything that could even be considered even
remotely heroic. They were hardly even soldiers, not yet trained or armed. They
didn’t even volunteer to “fight on the side of democracy”, but rather
forcefully conscripted against their will. And then their ship blew up and they
died. Is that really something to celebrate? While we should be thankful for
the service of all who fight for our country, we shouldn’t automatically assume
that every man who was K.I.A. was a hero. He could easily have been an
extremely unwilling draftee who died due to recklessness or laziness. Heck, he
could even be just a terrible person all around. Should we really celebrate him
just because he died, even if it was an unwilling sacrifice, without any honor
or sense of selflessness?
Vonnegut exercises
little discretion when it comes to touchy topics:
“Jesus Christ?”“Oh,” said Castle. “Him.” He shrugged. “People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.”“I see.” (p.169)
In another passage,
Vonnegut attempts to describe how worthless San Lorenzo is:
“When France claimed San Lorenzo in 1682,” wrote Castle, “no Spaniards complained. When Denmark claimed San Lorenzo in 1699, no Frenchmen complained. When the Dutch claimed San Lorenzo in 1704, no Danes complained. When England claimed San Lorenzo in 1706, no Dutchmen complained. When Spain reclaimed San Lorenzo in 1720, no Englishmen complained. When, in 1786, African Negroes took command of a British slave ship, ran it ashore on San Lorenzo, and proclaimed San Lorenzo an independent nation, an empire with an emperor, in fact, no Spaniards complained. (p.125)
I thought it was funny
in a way when I first read it. Here are some other descriptions of San Lorenzo
for context:
Everybody was bound to fail, for San Lorenzo was as unproductive as an equal area in the Sahara or the Polar Icecap. At the same time, it had as dense a population as could be found anywhere, India and China not excluded. (p.133)
Another quote that I
thought was funny:
“Do people still die on the hook?”“It’s inevitably fatal.”“I mean,” I said, “does ‘Papa’ really have people executed that way?” (p.175)
Here’s one more example
of dark humor. In this passage, Phillip Castle is talking about his experiences
as a child witnessing the bubonic plague kill everyone around him on San
Lorenzo:
“And Father started giggling,” Castle continued. “He couldn’t stop. He walked out into the night with his flashlight. He was still giggling. He was making the flashlight beam dance over all the dead people stacked outside. He put his hand on my head, and do you know what that marvelous man said to me?” asked Castle.“Nope.”“ ‘Son,’ my father said to me, ‘someday this will all be yours.’” (p.162)
Vonnegut’s effectiveness
lies in the simplicity and straightforwardness of his prose. In Cat’s Cradle,
Vonnegut takes simplicity one step further – most of the chapters are only one
to three pages long. While it may seem trivial to fit 127 chapters into less
than 300 pages, I’ve found that shorter chapters do in fact give the book a
faster pace. Normally, when you read a book, you may stop at the end of a
particular chapter because you know that the next one will take a while to get
through. With Cat’s Cradle however, you can simply keep reading since you know
the next chapter is only one or two more pages… until you’ve finished the book.
Shorter chapters also just make logical sense. Vonnegut restricts each chapter
to a single topic, only taking as much space as much space as he needs, whether
it’s a half a page or ten. In short, the format made the overall reading
experience enjoyable, but I digress.
Because Vonnegut’s prose is fairly simple, there are few complex rhetorical structures to be found in this novel. Rarely do we see intricate extended metaphors or long paragraphs of vivid imagery. However, Vonnegut does effectively convey his points using a unique rhetorical strategy – his large bank of Bokononist terminology. One of Vonnegut’s points is that religion today is often overly-complex to the point of becoming irrelevant to our lives. What better way to make this point than to create such a religion with its own set of superfluous terminology?
Because Vonnegut’s prose is fairly simple, there are few complex rhetorical structures to be found in this novel. Rarely do we see intricate extended metaphors or long paragraphs of vivid imagery. However, Vonnegut does effectively convey his points using a unique rhetorical strategy – his large bank of Bokononist terminology. One of Vonnegut’s points is that religion today is often overly-complex to the point of becoming irrelevant to our lives. What better way to make this point than to create such a religion with its own set of superfluous terminology?