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Chapter 3
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 explains that this book is intended to examine what is his karass “have been up to.” He explains that Bokonon is a religion founded on foma: “shameless lies” (a direct quote from The Books of Bokonon). He cautions the reader that if they can’t understand how a religion founded on lies can be useful, they will not understand this book.
Vonnegut makes a complicated point here that highlights both the potential comforts of religion and the fact that religions are human inventions. Foregrounding the artificiality of Bokononism forces the reader to think of the way in which the world’s major religions developed, and hints at the role they have played in humankind’s destructive nature.
Themes
John outlines who he sees as the members of his karass: Dr. Felix Hoenikker, the inventor of the atomic bomb, and Hoenikker’s children, Newt, Angela and Frank.
John is telegraphing to the reader that his fate is entwined with these other characters, setting up the development of the book.
Themes
John once wrote a letter to Newt, the youngest of the children, to ask for “anecdotes” about Dr. Hoenikker on the day the bomb was dropped. In the letter, he told Newt that his book intended to “emphasize the human rather than the technical side of the bomb,” so even the recollections of Newt (very young at the time) would be helpful.
Vonnegut here is being deeply satirical—there is no “human” side to a weapon that killed around 200,000 people. Newt’s youth at the time functions as a way of gesturing to the innocence of childhood in stark contrast to the devastation of the atomic bomb.
Themes
