Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut, 1963) is a wonderfully funny satire on religion, science and politics. The hero of the novel
, Jonah, is writing a book entitled The Day the World Ended which is to be an account of what a number of important Americans were doing on the fateful day that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. One of those he wishes to include in the book is the late Dr. Felix Hoenikker, the father of the bomb. The story begins when Jonah writes a letter to Dr. hoenikker's son, Newt.
What follows leads to two major discoveries. The first is that Dr. Hoenikker has invented a
substance know as Ice-Nine; a substance which the military wanted in order to put an end to mud. Ice-Nine is a substance which causes the water in mud to freeze. Its unfortunate side-effect is that it will set
off a chain reaction causing all water to freeze, including the water in human beings should they be unlucky to come into contact with it. This maniacal pursuit of science for its own sake rather than mankind's forms one of the major themes of the book.
The other major themes come into being when Jonah travels to the island of San Lorenzo, where another of Dr. Hoenikker's sons has managed to secure himself a position as the dictator's right-hand man, an especially impressive rise for a man who has previously shown no talent for anything other than model making. What happens, and the way in which Jonah eventually comes to be nominated as heir to the dying dictator is a story that shows the political system for the corrupt and ineffectual business that it is.
The island's inhabitants live in a state of abject poverty and, as the dictator has no intention of doing anything about this, he welcomes - while pretending to suppress - the advent of Bokononism, an invented
religion which serves no other purpose than to give the island's inhabitants hope in a hopeless situation.
The three themes of science, politics and religion are woven together throughout the novel and their inter-relationship is explored in some detail by Vonnegut. The power of the novel lies in the fact that, whilst the island of San Lorenzo is ludicrous and all that goes on there bizarre and, whilst Vonnegut has written a hilarious novel full of picaresque adventure, the author never loses sight of the message he wishes to convey. The reader, while entertained, is always confronted by the dangers of the three themes which make up the novel.