Summary Of Cat's Cradle

Cat’s Cradle begins with a call to action, a statement that the readers should “Call me Jonah… [as] my parents did, or nearly did. They called me John” (Vonnegut 11). The novel accounts the actions of John as he works to write his novel, “The Day the World Ended” -- a novel that he never finishes -- which “was to be an account of what important Americans had done on the day when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan” (Vonnegut 11). John also introduces a new, fictional religion called Bokononism, founded on the island of the Republic of San Lorenzo. Additionally, Bokononists believed that “humanity is organized into teams…that do God’s Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called the “karass” (Vonnegut 11). …show more content…
Felix Hoenikker, “one of the so-called ‘Fathers’ of the first atomic bomb” and a primary research character is his book are a part of his “karass” (Vonnegut 12). As such, John reaches out to the youngest of the three, Newt, and asks him to detail what he remembered of his father’s actions on the day the atomic bomb was dropped, to which Newt responds by writing that “[he was] playing with a loop of string… making the cat’s cradle was the closest I ever saw my father come to playing…he had never played with me before…he hardly ever even spoken to me” ( Vonnegut 16). Consequently, this direct quotation from the story helps to shed light onto what sort of man Hoenikker was: a man who was often too caught up in work to have fun or to even play with his children, a point strengthened later in the