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Hyperbole
Definition of Irony
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how... read full definition
Irony
Explanation and Analysis—Mud:
Dr. Hoenikker’s invention of ice-nine becomes situationally ironic in retrospect. His invention owes its inspiration to mud. According to Dr. Breed, a general had approached the genius scientist in search of “a little pill or a little machine” that would spare the Marines the trouble of fighting in mud. With ice-nine, the military would be capable of transforming “infinite expanses of muck, marsh, swamp, creeks, pools, quicksand, and mire as solid as [a] desk.”
These passing remarks acquire a new, ironic understanding as Dr. von Koenigswald administers Bokononist last rites to a dying Papa Monzano—during which they chant their praise for mud. In Bokononist doctrine, “God made mud” and sculpts the human race by commanding it to “‘Sit up!’” Mud is not only proof of God’s creation but the source of all humanity, a detail that adds an unexpected twist to ice-nine. If Bokononist dogma can be believed, then Dr. Hoenikker’s mud-transforming technology ironically aims at humankind’s wholesale eradication. Humanity’s life-providing substance becomes the very object of its destructive fancies. More than offering tactical military convenience, ice-nine destroys the source of all life.
Unsurprisingly, ice-nine does just that. Dr. Hoenikker’s creation stands as a fitting second act to his ghastly atomic bomb, solidifying humans and oceans alike. It precipitates an apocalyptic winter, literally fulfilling its ironic, figurative destruction.
Related Themes:
Chapter 68. Hoon-yera Mora-toorz
Explanation and Analysis—100 Martyrs of Democracy:
Situational irony abounds in Cat’s Cradle, which draws its humor partly from the unexpected circumstances and discoveries that undermine first impressions. One such instance involves the 100 Martyrs of Democracy, a group whose legendary status moves Papa Monzano to declare a holiday. When John asks the taxi driver about the martyrs, he confronts instead a somewhat anti-climactic truth:
The driver told me that San Lorenzo had declared war on Germany and Japan an hour after Pearl Harbor was attacked.
San Lorenzo conscripted a hundred men to fight on the side of democracy. These hundred men were put on a ship bound for the United States, where they were to be armed and trained.
The ship was sunk by a German submarine right outside of Bolivar harbor.
The irony of these hundred martyrs has a cruel, almost cynical humor to it: a country ruled by an autocrat sends its troops to defend democracy abroad. San Lorenzo—home of a senseless dictator who leeches off his people—is the absolute antithesis of democracy. Vonnegut never explicitly describes the injustice of Papa Monzano’s autocratic rule, but he implies it: the “fat” ruler stands among a crowd of “thin” people, lives in a “cruel” castle, and freezes his own island into a solid. The people sing about their “rich, lucky” island at Papa’s command.
The brutal force of such irony only gets compounded by the soldiers’ pathetic fates. As expected with the miserable island itself, the hundred martyrs get shot before they even leave the harbor. San Lorenzo’s feeble attempt at democracy ends in disaster. The hundred martyrs—in their ridiculous irony and tragedy—become a symbol of comic futility.
Related Themes:
Chapter 75. Give My Regards to Albert Schweitzer
Explanation and Analysis—Saint, I Think:
John’s hyperbolic account presents Julian Castle as a man of wild contrasts. On one page, he associates the American sugar millionaire with the likes of “Tommy Manville, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Barbara Hutton.” Castle’s “selfish phase” involves “lechery, alcoholism, reckless driving, and draft evasion.” Having established a hospital in San Lorenzo, though, he is now the epitome of virtue:
And then Angela Hoenikker Conners, Newt’s beanpole sister, came in with Julian Castle, father of Philip, and founder of the House of Hope and Mercy in the Jungle. Castle wore a baggy white linen suit and a string tie. He had a scraggly mustache. He was bald. He was scrawny. He was a saint, I think.
John’s hyperbole arguably spills over into verbal irony. The selfish, Hitler-esque debauch has become a “saint,” pulling off a transformation so impossible that it comes across as downright comic. The novel’s humorous observation reinforces its baffling moral calculus, in which good deeds can somehow compensate for past atrocities. Like the sugar billionaire, Dr. von Koenigswald—the Auschwitz camp physician—is on track to save as many lives as he killed by 3010. Vonnegut satirically criticizes the cheap repentance practiced by the novel’s characters.
Julian Castle’s sainthood problematizes the cheapening of humanity. In Cat’s Cradle, society heaps sanctity and praise while simultaneously falling out of touch with more genuine forms of human feeling. It detonates bombs and praises its inventors. It dismisses brutal suffering with a wave of performative penance. The novel’s commentary reveals a world that is willing to worship everything, follow anything—freak scientists, atomic bombs, lazy presidents, and self-persecuting prophets included. In this shallow world, everyone is a saint, martyr, or prophet. And that means no one is actually any good.
Related Themes:
Chapter 78. Ring of Steel
Explanation and Analysis—Bokononism:
Cat’s Cradle subjects Bokononism—and religion at large—to a satire of contradictory, mind-boggling ironies. Through interspersed chapters and digressions, John relates the Bokononist tenets to the reader. The portrait that follows is puzzling, absurd, and comic. In what seems to be a feat of cognitive gymnastics, Bokononism is aware of its own foma as it preaches to the masses. The people who practice the religion—that is, all San Lorenzans—manage to recognize its consistencies and nonetheless embrace its doctrines. Bokononism presents an extreme caricature of religion by reveling in its own incompatible lies.
The history of Bokononism’s founding takes this deliberately senseless theology a step still further. Religion becomes even more of a charade as the novel adds another two-fold irony to Bokonon’s creation. In Chapter 78, Julian Castle explains the scarcely imaginable circumstances behind Bokononist belief:
Well, when it became evident that no governmental or economic reform was going to make the people much less miserable, the religion became the one real instrument of hope. Truth was the enemy of the people, because the truth was so terrible, so Bokonon made it his business to provide the people with better and better lies.
Realizing that truth is miserable, Bokonon makes a stunning leap of logic by choosing to create "better lies." His supposed pursuit of utopia and higher truth ironically creates a hell veiled by comforting fictions and happy ignorance instead. Bokononism is so farcically ironic that it even tries to undermine itself. Hoping to increase its popular appeal, Bokonon voluntarily persecutes himself to add more “zest” and “tang” to the religion. The people of San Lorenzo promise to hook the prophet at the same time that they practice his teachings.
Bokononism seems almost too self-aware for its own good. The novel satirizes religion’s failings through the laughable, ironic, and unthinkable reality that underlies Bokononism’s guise of truth. Through Bokononism, Vonnegut suggests that religion may be nothing more than a series of whimsical constructs, a hollow “cat’s cradle” of cruel self-inventions.
Related Themes:
