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Irony
Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Chapter 116. The Grand Ah-whoom
Explanation and Analysis—Earth Turned Toy:
A strange sight greets John and the crumbling palace after Papa Monzano unleashes ice-nine into the world. In Chapter 116, Vonnegut’s metaphors capture the wrecked planet and the scale of the haunting destruction:
The moist green earth was a blue-white pearl.
The sky darkened. Borasisi, the sun, became a sickly yellow ball, tiny and cruel.
The sky was filled with worms. The worms were tornadoes.
Vonnegut’s metaphors present a series of mixed connotations. A glance at the pearl-like earth switches over to the “sickly yellow ball” of the sun, and then towards the squirming, worm-like tornadoes. The impressions—which range from strange beauty to disgusting decomposition—are jumbled in disarray, a close mimicry of the novel’s own reality. In this chaos of images, Cat’s Cradle positions apocalypse beside eerie, static perfection. John describes the tornadoes as “worms” in a potential hint of death and decay. But he also renders the earth in unsettlingly poetic terms. The “blue-white pearl”—frozen, inert—seems as strangely disturbing as beautiful.
Certain parts of the sequence also call back to Dr. Hoenikker’s obsession with toys. A playfulness underlies some of the metaphors: the world resembles a marble in its frozen, pearl-like state. The sun is a “sickly yellow ball” suspended in the sky, as though waiting to be dribbled or kicked. For a scientist who scatters cheap children’s toys around his laboratory, Dr. Hoenikker’s creation has seemingly drawn the world to its fitting conclusion. It makes for an oddly full-circle moment, and a warning to those who treat the world as one giant plaything.
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