FREE ESSAY ON THE ROLE OFRELIGION AND MORALITY IN CAT'S CRADLE

THE ROLE OFRELIGION AND MORALITY IN CAT'S CRADLE

As an author, Kurt Vonnegut has received just about every kind of praise an author can
receive: his works held the same sway over American philosophy as did those of Jack
Kerouac or J.R.R. Tolkein; his writing has received acclaim from academics and the masses
alike; and three of his books have been made into feature films. Society has permanently
and noticeably been altered by his writing. Through accessible language and
easily-understood themes, Vonnegut has created works subtle, engrossing, and familiar.
His main method for doing this is by exploiting a theme with which everyone is familiar
and about which everyone has his own opinion: religion.
Not many people are more qualified to explore this theme than Vonnegut. He was born in
1922 on Armistice Day (November 11), a holiday celebrating peace, in Indianapolis. His
family was moderately wealthy until the onset of the Great Depression, when they lost
everything. In 1944, Vonnegut's mother committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills.
Soon afterwards, he joined the army and fought in the Second World War. Vonnegut was
captured as a POW and kept prisoner in Dresden. Soon after his capture, Dresden, an
entirely civilian town, was bombed heavily. Vonnegut survived the bombing, came home, and
became a writer. His first book, Player Piano, received very little notice at the time it
was written, 1952. When he published Sirens of Titan in 1959, it also was largely
ignored. In 1969, Vonnegut published Slaughterhouse Five, which was an immediate
commercial and academic success. Slaughterhouse Five's success brought attention to his
other works, and though Vonnegut was not as popular after the '60's, he continued to
publish successful books (http://www.duke.edu/~crh4/vonnegut/). 
Vonnegut's works have been classified as "science fiction", but that hardly does them
justice. His works are significantly influenced by that genre, but contain strikingly
relevant commentaries about contemporary American society which set him apart from other
science-fiction writers. His use of science fiction draws a humorous contrast between the
all-important significance of the nature of the universe and of reality, and the
insignificance of human life and society. All of his works emphasize the enormous forces
acting on his characters, not the least of which is fate. As his writing progressed and
matured, this stylistic nuance became more and more evident. In his book Slaughterhouse
Five, Vonnegut describes his own style by means of Tralfamadorians, an alien race for
whom time is nonexistent, and whose literature reflects this:
Each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message describing a situation,
a scene. We Tralfamadorians read them all at once, not one after the oth-
er. There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages ex-
cept that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at 
once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and 
deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, 
no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments
seen all at one time (88).
Indeed, Vonnegut has dismissed temporal continuity in his writing, and has thus
eliminated suspense. Characters are often aware of their own inevitable destiny, as in
The Sirens of Titan, and are helpless to stop it from coming to pass. Vonnegut makes it
clear that modern society is much like this - people can see where they're headed, but
are too powerless or apathetic to prevent it.
In his book Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut mocks people's mindless, apathetic acceptance of their
fates by portraying a situation in which unimaginably powerful forces toss around people
desperate to escape them. He presents "civilization's attempt to commit suicide (Hocus
Pocus, 72)", the atomic bomb dropped at Hiroshima, and ends the book with all of the
water on earth freezing as the result of a substance called "ice-nine", and thus
civilization successfully committing suicide. Ironically, the man who created the atomic
bomb also created ice-nine, a man not diabolically evil, but merely absent-minded. In
this, Vonnegut portrays not only the amazing influence the forces of the universe have on
us, but also the influence a select few of us have on the forces of the universe.
In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut describes an amazingly intricate means by which to accept the
the whims of the universe. It is a parody of religion, and is what religion would be if
it were stripped of all ritual and dogma. It is called Bokononism, and it reveals just
how human it is to permit fate to have its way, and just how futile it is to fight
against it. The basic tenet of Bokononism, according to Vonnegut, is that people should
live by whatever foma (harmless untruths) make them happy. People, according to
Bokononism, should do this so that fate seems much less prevalent in their lives, and so
that they feel that their own free will is the main force in their lives. Vonnegut argues
that such self-deception is one of the most integral aspects of humanity (Understanding
Kurt Vonnegut, 53-65). 
Cat's Cradle was published in 1963, at a time in American history when free will seemed
to be the only force guiding anyone. People were tired of war, and tired of the threat of
war. People were on the verge of losing faith in government. It is in this environment
that Vonnegut put forth his attack on religion and on the human situation. The thought of
ice-nine was just about as frightening as the very real threat of nuclear attack, so
people could easily relate to Cat's Cradle's plot. Vonnegut describes government in Cat's
Cradle as effective only when an enemy exists, and he portrays Bokononism as government's
enemy. When the tension between good and evil is high, says Vonnegut, the people can be
kept happy and under control. When the line separating them becomes blurred, people
quickly become disillusioned and rebellious. Though Vietnam, in which the line between
good and evil was almost nonexistent, did not bring about the end of civilization,
domestic rebelliousness did alter American life, just as Vonnegut predicted. In this
particular instance, Bokononism can be likened to Communism - the perpetual enemy
perceived, perhaps wrongly, to be the most dangerous force in the world. 
Cat's Cradle is not the only one of Vonnegut's works which has such an undertone of angst
and urgency; indeed, it is one of the defining features of his work. The tension between
the forces acting on the human race is higher than it has ever been, and if one force
should give way, life as we know it will end. The only way to carry on is to convince
one's self that life is not this treacherous, and that each individual can affect the
outcome. This, according to Vonnegut, is the most necessary foma of all, and it might be
able to save civilization.
Bibliography:
- Allen, William Rodney. Understanding Kurt Vonnegut. Columbia: U.S.C. Press, 1991.
- Schatt, Stanley. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. New York: G.K. Hall & Co, 1976.
- Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat's Cradle. New York: Dell Publishing, 1963.
- Hocus Pocus. New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 1990.
- The Sirens of Titan. New York: Dell Publishing, 1959.
- Slaughterhouse Five. New York: Dell Publishing, 1969. 
-Vonnegut, Kurt. Personal interview. 15 Sept. 1970.
- "Kurt Vonnegut". http://www.duke.edu/~crh4/vonnegut/
- "Kurt Vonnegut - Quotes, Bokonon, and more [sic]".
http://acad.fandm.edu/~al_burgman/vonnegut/VONNEGUT.HTML