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Satire
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
Following John’s travels, Cat’s Cradle splits its time between Ilium and San Lorenzo—both fictional places that satirize the abject state of post-WWII America. It criticizes the mundane banality of American life through Ilium, the smoggy and drab New York town where Dr. Hoenikker lived. Ilium is so boring that “I was already in the beginning and end of night life in Ilium,” John explains as he visits the town’s lone bar. The Research Laboratory dominates Ilium’s economic and social fabric; prostitutes babble vaguely about “science” while stupid administrative assistants churn away at research they do not care to understand. Through this nondescript city, Vonnegut delivers a taste of American life’s boring stupidity.
The other face of American dominance is third-world poverty. John’s feature about Julian Castle sends him to San Lorenzo, an impoverished, disease-ridden island country that happens to be the butt of every imperial project. In an absurd historical digression, John explains how San Lorenzo had switched hands from the Spanish to the French, Dutch, English, and back to the Spanish. When he arrives on the tarmac, the colonial territory is an American puppet that has supposedly embraced the ideals of Christianity and democracy. Its inhabitants live in complete squalor and poverty, scavenging for trash at the foot of waterfalls while American expatriates like the Crosbys lounge in exotic hotels. San Lorenzo fulfills the two sides of American geopolitics—complete idiocy on the one hand and extreme suffering on the other.
Related Themes:
