Vonnegut’s Ice-9
What if there existed a type of ice that could freeze anything within seconds of contact? A big plot driver in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle is the made-up bio-weapon called Ice-9 which does exactly that. When Dr. Asa Breed says, “When it [the rain] fell, it would freeze into hard little hobnails of ice-nine—and that would be the end of the world!” he clearly shows how dangerous this weapon is to the entire world (Vonnegut 50). It’s very existence would be a bigger threat than the atomic bomb. But the danger of Ice-9, while an aspect of what Vonnegut’s aim is, is not to tell a story about an apocalypse but, to instead, tell a story about a world that’s given itself over to war and world dominance but fail, therefore causing …show more content…
Vonnegut manages to address the great social problems with the ice, the main problem being the Cold War. The fighting has turned from hot to cold and Vonnegut shows this with the change in the weapons developed within Cat’s Cradle. Dr. Felix Hoenikker goes from working on the atomic bombs that end the second World War to an impossibility, ice that can freeze anything with water molecules within seconds of contact. The social aspect comes in when the Ice-9 falls to his children after his death and how they deal with it. Even Dr. Hoenikker himself doesn’t escape the social …show more content…
It’s this country, this country which has nothing but still has a Minister of Science and Technology even though it doesn’t have any, that acts as the catalyst for the apocalypse. Even though the Soviet Union or the United States could have also catalyzed the apocalypse, it was “Papa’ Monzano who ate the Ice-9 at his death, allowing it out of it’s strict containment. Without the resources to properly contain this ice, it was allowed to encounter the ocean, causing the end of the world in seconds. This then leads back to the morals of the Hoenikkers’, namely
What if there existed a type of ice that could freeze anything within seconds of contact? A big plot driver in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle is the made-up bio-weapon called Ice-9 which does exactly that. When Dr. Asa Breed says, “When it [the rain] fell, it would freeze into hard little hobnails of ice-nine—and that would be the end of the world!” he clearly shows how dangerous this weapon is to the entire world (Vonnegut 50). It’s very existence would be a bigger threat than the atomic bomb. But the danger of Ice-9, while an aspect of what Vonnegut’s aim is, is not to tell a story about an apocalypse but, to instead, tell a story about a world that’s given itself over to war and world dominance but fail, therefore causing …show more content…
Vonnegut manages to address the great social problems with the ice, the main problem being the Cold War. The fighting has turned from hot to cold and Vonnegut shows this with the change in the weapons developed within Cat’s Cradle. Dr. Felix Hoenikker goes from working on the atomic bombs that end the second World War to an impossibility, ice that can freeze anything with water molecules within seconds of contact. The social aspect comes in when the Ice-9 falls to his children after his death and how they deal with it. Even Dr. Hoenikker himself doesn’t escape the social …show more content…
It’s this country, this country which has nothing but still has a Minister of Science and Technology even though it doesn’t have any, that acts as the catalyst for the apocalypse. Even though the Soviet Union or the United States could have also catalyzed the apocalypse, it was “Papa’ Monzano who ate the Ice-9 at his death, allowing it out of it’s strict containment. Without the resources to properly contain this ice, it was allowed to encounter the ocean, causing the end of the world in seconds. This then leads back to the morals of the Hoenikkers’, namely