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Chapter 53
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 returns to the book about San Lorenzo, looking up Mona in the index. He finds a section about her father, Nestor Aamons, who fought in World War Two. In Portugal he met Julian Castle, who invited him to design the hospital—“House of Hope and Mercy in the Jungle”—on San Lorenzo. On the island, he fathered a daughter with a native woman, Celia, and died soon after.
Like Bokonon, McCabe, Castle, and John, Mona’s father has a seemingly fated inevitability about being drawn to San Lorenzo. The construction of unlikely meaningful connection with the island is deliberately satirical.
Themes
