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Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Cat’s Cradle, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Science and Morality
Religion
Governance, Politics, and Nationhood
Absurdity and Meaninglessness
Summary
Analysis
John meets Dr. Breed’s aging secretary, Miss Faust, who is putting up Christmas decorations. She and Dr. Breed unfurl a banner which says, “Good Will Toward Men.” She informs her boss that she has got the chocolate bars for the Girl Pool—a Christmas tradition.
The banner is another one of Vonnegut’s jokes. It is, of course, being hung in the lab where humankind’s most destructive—and least representative of goodwill—technology was produced. The banality of the girl pool tradition contrasts with the gravity of the atomic bomb. “Faust” is a nod to a famous legend in which a man sells his soul to the devil in exchange for unlimited knowledge. The implication is that the dangerous knowledge the scientists have accumulated has come at the cost of humanity’s soul.
Themes
