Honors Blog 3

Quote

“’I know I got limitations,’ Frank continued. ‘They’re the same limitations my father had.’”(198)

The reason I picked this quote was because Frank is the son of a Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Felix Hoenikker. His father was very neutral when it came to science; there was no difference between killing a person for science or studying a newborn baby. Frank was offered leadership of San Lorenzo but he refused, I believe the reason he refused was because of his similarities that he had with his father, he didn’t have enough judgement in his morals.

Connections

I consider Felix Hoenikker’s views on life very similar to mine, I had to open up several mice at my science internship two years ago and I had a lot of problems completing my assignment due to moral and ethical issues. I couldn’t believe that I was opening up mice and killing them in a gruesome way, the experience at that internship changed who I was, before the internship I already agreed that discoveries for science are more important than some ethical issues like killing mice but I was unable to overcome my ethics and morals to help science until I performed the experiment several times.

A small connection I made to San Lorenzo’s country was the law that the government was Christian and nothing else was allowed. I connected to how China only allows the practice of Buddhism in their country but people secretly practice Christianity or other religions. In the book, although Bokonism is not allowed, everyone in the country secretly practices it. I am not sure if China still has this law or not but last time I checked, China still didn’t allow other religions.

Felix’s personality also reminds me of a child, a person who tries to gain knowledge but does not have the term “evil” that most people associate with malicious intent. Felix is not malicious, he researches what he pleases ignoring what is considered evil or good, similar to a child that does not know what is good and what is bad. A child will make many mistakes that would be considered evil if the child realized what he is doing but he does not, similarly in science, we do not always know what the outcome of our experiments will be.

Discussion Questions

What does the title “Cat’s Cradle” have to do with the story?

Was the Apocalypse cast on the world caused by evil or science?

How Vonnegut satirize Religion and Business using Ice Nine and the fake country?

How does Vonnegut use the fake religion “Bokonism” to satirize human’s obsession for the truth?

What does the practice of connecting one’s feet to another person’s satirize?

Visual Representation

I chose this picture to represent the book because this is what I would imagine the entire earth would look like after the Ice Nine escaped and froze the world. This is a picture of Mount Everest, I chose this because it reminded me of John’s words at the end of the book, “If I were a younger man, I would write history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow,”(287).Mount McCabe is the tallest point in the fictional San Lorenzo and so it reminded me of Mount Everest as well as the icy conditions that have befallen the world.

Reflection
The book was split into a couple hundred chapters, it’s as if each chapter’s title is a thesis or summary, I really enjoyed this style of writing that he put into the book. I praise Vonnegut’s unique styles of writing, in each book that I have read of his, he explores a different representation of his writing, this time he used extremely short chapters, in a different book Vonnegut drew his own pictures. I did not find the book funny, even though I heard that this book was made to make people laugh, I guess it’s because this book was written a very long time ago and perhaps this book was very humorous back in the day.