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Cat's Cradle
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Cat's Cradle (1963) (edit title/settings)

by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

Cat's Cradle is Vonneguts' satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic... read more

Characters/People edit see section history

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies.”
  • “We Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon "If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons," writes Bokonon, "that person may be a member of your karass." At another point in The Books of Bokonon he tells us, "Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass." By that he means that a karass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries. It is as free form as an amoeba.”
  • “Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”
    Bokonon
  • “Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.”
    Bokonon
  • “He always said he would never take his own advice, because he knew it was worthless.”
  • “See the cat? See the cradle?”
  • “When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.”
    John
  • “People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.”
  • “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
  • “Nothing in this book is true.”
  • “Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end,And our God will take things back that He to us did lend.And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God,Why go right ahead and scold Him. He'll just smile and nod.”
  • “Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan.”
    Dr. Breed
Show all 12 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

Call me Jonah.

Table of Contents edit see section history

1. The Day The World Ended
2. Nice, Nice, Very Nice
3. Folly
4. A Tentative Tangling Of Tendrils
5. Letter From A Pre-Med
6. Bug Fights
7. The Illustrious Hoenikkers
8. Newt’s Thing With Zinka
9. Vice-President In Charge Of Volcanoes
10. Secret Agent X-9
11. Protein
12. End Of The World Delight
13. The Jumping-Off Place
14. When Automobiles Had Cut-Glass Vases
15. Merry Christmas
16. Back To Kindergarten
17. The Girl Pool
18. The Most Valuable Commodity On Earth
19. No More Mud
20. Ice-Nine
21. The Marines March On
22. Member Of The Yellow Press
23. The Last Batch Of Brownies
24. What A Wampeter Is
25. The Main Thing About Dr. Hoenikker
26. What God Is
27. Men From Mars
28. Mayonnaise
29. Gone, But Not Forgotten
30. Only Sleeping
31. Another Breed
32. Dynamite Money
33. An Ungrateful Man
34. Vin-Dit
35. Hobby Shop
36. Meow
37. A Modern Major General
38. Barracuda Capital Of The World
39. Fata Morgana
40. House Of Hope And Mercy
41. A Karass Built For Two
42. Bicycles For Afghanistan
43. The Demonstrator
44. Communist Sympathizers
45. Why Americans Are Hated
46. The Bokononist Method For Handling Caesar
47. Dynamic Tension
48. Just Like Saint Augustine
49. A Fish Pitched Up By An Angry Sea
50. A Nice Midget
51. O.K., Mom
52. No Pain
53. The President Of Fabri-Tek
54. Communists, Nazis, Royalists, Parachutists, And Draft Dodgers
55. Never Index Your Own Book
56. A Self-Supporting Squirrel Cage
57. The Queasy Dream
58. Tyranny With A Difference
59. Fasten Your Seat Belts
60. An Underprivileged Nation
61. What A Corporal Was Worth
62. Why Hazel Wasn’t Scared
63. Reverent And Free
64. Peace And Plenty
65. A Good Time To Come To San Lorenzo
66. The Strongest Thing There Is
67. Hy-U-O-Ook-Kuh!
68. Hoon-Yera Mora-Toorz
69. A Big Mosaic
70. Tutored By Bokonon
71. The Happiness Of Being An American
72. The Pissant Hilton
73. Black Death
74. Cat’s Cradle
75. Give My Regards To Albert Schweitzer
76. Julian Castle Agrees With Newt That Everything Is Meaningless
77. Aspirin And Boko-Maru
78. Ring Of Steel
79. Why Mccabe’s Soul Grew Coarse
80. The Waterfall Strainers
81. A White Bride For The Son Of A Pullman Porter
82. Zah-Mah-Ki-Bo
83. Dr. Schlichter Von Koenigswald Approaches The Break-Even Point
84. Blackout
85. A Pack Of Foma
86. Two Little Jugs
87. The Cut Of My Jib
88. Why Frank Couldn’t Be President
89. Duffle
90. Only One Catch
91. Mona
92. On The Poet’s Celebration Of His First Boko-Maru
93. How I Almost Lost My Moma
94. The Highest Mountain
95. I See The Hook
96. Bell, Book, And Chicken In A Hatbox
97. The Stinking Christian
98. Last Rites
99. Dyot Meet Mat
100. Down The Oubliette Goes Frank
101. Like My Predecessors, I Outlaw Bokonon
102. Enemies Of Freedom
103. A Medical Opinion On The Effects Of A Writers’ Strike
104. Sulfathiazole
105. Pain-Killer
106. What Bokononists Say When They Commit Suicide
107. Feast Your Eyes!
108. Frank Tells Us What To Do
109. Frank Defends Himself
110. The Fourteenth Book
111. Time Out
112. Newt’s Mother’s Reticule
113. History
114. When I Felt The Bullet Enter My Heart
115. As It Happened
116. The Grand Ah-Whoom
117. Sanctuary
118. The Iron Maiden And The Oubliette
119. Mona Thanks Me
120. To Whom It May Concern
121. I Am Slow To Answer
122. The Swiss Family Robinson
123. Of Mice And Men
124. Frank’s Ant Farm
125. The Tasmanians
126. Soft Pipes, Play On
127. The End

Glossary edit see section history

  • Boku-maru: Supreme act of worship of the bokonists, which is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the naked soles of the feet of two persons
  • Busy, busy, busy: What bokonists say when they think about how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.
  • Duprass: Karass with only two people.
  • Foma: Harmless Untruths.
  • Granfalloon: A false karass, people who imagine they have a connection that does not really exist.
  • Karass: A group of people who, often unknowingly, work together to do god's will.
  • Pool-pah: Wrath of god.
  • Sin-wat: a person who want's all of someone's love for themself.
  • Sinookas: Intertwining Tendrils of peoples lives.
  • Vin-dit: A sudden shove in the direction of bokonism.
  • Wampeter: Centrel point of a karass.
Show all 11 glossary entries

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

  • Fatalism: Describe this theme.
  • A cat's cradle: A game of twisting and tying string to form a a sort of net that is supposed to look like a cradle for a cat, Vonnegut uses this as a symbol for the ridiculousness of man making something out of nothing, particularly religion. There is no cat and there is no cradle, in the same way that men make up other things that do not exist.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 427 of 1271 in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. (authoritative list)

Preceded by V., and followed by The Graduate.

This is book 28 of 100 in National Public Radio's Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy. (authoritative list)

Preceded by The Martian Chronicles, and followed by Preludes & Nocturnes.

This is book 164 of 214 in Best English-Language Fiction of the 20th Century. (authoritative list)

Preceded by The Adventures of Augie March, and followed by O Pioneers!.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Country: United States
Publication Date: 1963
ISBN: 0-385-33348-X
Page Count: 304

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: 76154035
  • Dewey: 813.54

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

   
  • A Man Without a Country

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