Satire and Surrealism in Kurt Vonneguts Cats Cradle :: Kurt Vonnegut Cats Cradle Essays

Satire and Surrealism in Kurt Vonneguts Cats CradleIn 1963, Kurt Vonnegut published his aid novel Cats Cradle. It is a distressing yet satirical critique of our baseball club and the surrealistic end that is its destiny. Through his use of irony and sarcasm he attacks and exposes societys flaws while questioning its intelligence. Nothing is safe from his satiric pen. He attacks lore and worship with equal intensity. He creates a novel that has left, an indelible ground level on an entire generation of readers (back cover). Society has constructed many pillars (religion, science) to protect us from the unknown. Kurt Vonnegut uses satire to tear them down. He attacks religion through his false religion of Bokononism. It is a religion of shameless lies(5). Newt summarizes religion up stovepipe when he compares it to the cats cradle. Religion . . . See the cat? . . . See the cradle? Yet, by chance the greatest attack on religion comes in the last split up of the novel. Bokonon h imself says, If I were a younger man, I would write a narrative of human stupidity. . . and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, smiling horrible, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who(287). The antithesis of religion is science. It is the provider of horrifying truths. Kurt Vonnegut satirical looks at how science will lead to the destruction of mankind. It is the scientist who created the atom run out and it is the scientist who created Ice-9, yet the scientist refuses to take responsibility for it. Vonnegut satirically looks at the irresponsibility of the scientist through Felix Hoenikker who says, Why should I bother with made-up games when there are so many real ones going on?(11). He never understands that the games he is playing will catch a disastrous effect on the human race. This disaster comes in the form of Ice-9. Kurt Vonnegut creates a surrealistic emplacement of the apocalypse. It is a new and strange world that Jonah returns to after privacy for a w eek in the bomb shelter. It is a world that could have been found on the canvas of a Salvador Dali painting. The earth is a blue-white pearl, and the flip over is filled with worm-like tornadoes while the sun has become a tiny savage sickly yellow ball (261).