Cat's Cradle

Felix Hoenikker's three children are Vonnegut's representation of an unreasonable, greedy, and irreponsible humanity. Felix himself had little common sense, responsibility, or understanding of familial love. His mishandling of his creation of spontinaity, ice-nine, led to the possession of this substance by his children. In a combination of irresponbile and foolish choices, the ice-nine in the possession of each child ended up out of their hands. Vonnegut attempts to show the consequences of human actions. The book makes the statement that it is fruitless to warn humanity not to repeat the mistakes of the past because they happen anyway, out of our own selfishness and sutpidity. The Hoenikker children witnessed the atrocity brought on by the atomic bomb. It is incredulously ironic that, as adults, they vie for possession of the most dangerous substance ever created. This is a sure example of how Vonnegut uses the Hoenikker children to make his commentary on humanity as a whole.

"If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbling my nose at You Know Who" (Vonnegut 191)

The closing statement of the novel sums up the entirety of Kurt Vonnegut's intended commentary in his writing. All of the ridiculous choices, reasoning (if any), and intents of the characters in the story add up to the author's portrayal of Humanity as a mass of greedy, selfish, irresponsible fools. The paragraph makes an extremely powerful statement- that it is useless to dwell on the wretched mistakes of humanity. When it comes down to it, the best thing one can do is sit back and laugh. An especially significant part is the mention of ice-nine's ability to make statues of men. If ice-nince here represents the overwhelming greed for power, then the statues represent the leaders in our society who have succumbed to the dangerous addicition of power. In the same way that these statues, these leaders blinded by greed, were destroyed by their desires, ice-nine physically destroys humanity.

I found a true interest this novel. It was thoroughly enjoyable to try to decipher the meanings of the symbols, characters, and settings within the novel. Though a seemingly ridiculous plot on the surface, the book clearly had a significant, underlying meaning, and I loved being able to figure out what it was. Take, for example, the mishandling of the completely science fiction substance ice-nine. This may appear to be an insignificant plot detail, however, on the larger scale, it can actually represents the irresponsibility of humans and their tendency to act based on greed than on reason. In the same way, the beautiful daughter of Papa on San Lorenzo, Mona, is nothing more than a sex symbol, the representation of irresponsible human desires. Understanding these underlying meanings on the surace of seemingly superflous infomation was my favorite part of reading Cat's Cradle. It turned out that Vonnegut was maknig a much bigger statement than I realized at the beginning of my reading.