Essay

Reading books is a great passion of mine, and even though I have had less time for independent reading during the past few years of High School, I have discovered novels which I feel very strongly about. I found one of my favorite books of all time, Cat’s Cradle by science fiction author Kurt Vonnegut, during my Junior year of High School. In the book, the narrator is researching how the day that the Hiroshima bomb was dropped impacted the lives of Americans. As part of his study, he interviews and studies the family of one of the men who developed the atomic bomb. This scientist has passed away and left his children each with a piece of a very dangerous weapon, ice-nine, which is a chemical modification of water. When ice-nine touches anything containing water, the water molecules become ice, causing what has been touched to “freeze” at any temperature. Another critical part of Vonnegut’s story is that the narrator and the children of the scientist end up in San Lorenzo, a poor island ruled by an imaginary dictator, where everybody follows the religion of Bokononism in secret. Bokononism is a satire of a religion started by an outcast, who wanders into the jungle and writes a doctrine for the people of the island. The novel sounds silly, but partially through reading it I realized that the themes of the book reached not only beyond the fictional world, but that they tackled problems which are invasive and even devastating to our modern world. 1

I did write a critique on this novel for my Humanities class in Junior year, and I focused on the religious metaphors of the characters and philosophies of the book. However, I was unable to come right out and say (probably in a very opinionated manner) that this book reflects two of the major flaws of mankind, and especially America. Since the arms race and the development of nuclear weaponry, many countries are in possession of their own ice-nine. Vonnegut’s book alludes to the nuclear fission bombs dropped in Japan during World War II, and this is no accident. Nuclear weapons have given countries a very powerful threat, as these weapons easily cause extermination of cities, and certain kinds are hypothesized to be able to destroy the entire earth. In the novel, the scientist whose research led to the development of the atomic bomb ended up going nearly insane during and after the time when the bomb was dropped. This poses a question for us- What ethical responsibility do nations with nuclear weapons have to protect or destroy the lives of citizens of rival countries? Ice-nine represents every horrible weapon that mankind possesses, what damage it can cause to enemy countries, and perhaps more importantly the damage that it can cause to the human psyche. Is it right to have the power to destroy ourselves and others? Ice-nine is a form of water, a simple chemical substance that we come across everyday of our lives. Hydrogen bombs are created from hydrogen atoms, which we also are in contact with all the time. We take what the world gave us, natural pieces of this earth, and we modify them in such a way to make them deadly. In Vonnegut’s book, people die and the world is almost destroyed by a small error in merely touching ice-nine. A simple miscalculation or mistake can cause unfathomable and permanent negative changes in our world. I believe that there should be no nuclear weapons, or other weapons with the power to wipe out complete nations. We need, as intelligent beings, to be able to negotiate and defend ourselves in more humane ways. There is no excuse for this type of military ignorance.2

Also in Kurt Vonnegut’s book, religion and politics are tools that Bokonon and his “rival” McCabe use to distract the people of San Lorenzo from their horrible lives. They create a doctrine that creates conflict, and essentially a story, and suddenly everybody believes it as a fact. No matter your stance on religion, it cannot be ignored that anybody can make a fraudulent religion, and that religion is a distraction from everyday needs (eating, breathing, sleeping, working). Religion also causes conflict in the novel, and even though it is technically “outlawed,” everybody on the island partakes in it, even when the penalty for this is death. San Lorenzo is an island, much like our country, which is based on lies. The fundamentals and downfall of it could be said to parallel something similar to those of our own nation. 3

Literature can be read for meaning or for fun, but almost every book is written with a message. Kurt Vonnegut is known for his work with both satire and important concepts of how society functions. If I were a writer, I suppose I would have themes and stories similar to Vonnegut’s own. There are changes that need to be made in our world, and perhaps they need to be disguised in literary metaphors in order for the majority of people to understand the problems that we face. Reading a book for school sometimes allows you to complete an assignment, but occasionally it causes you to change the way that you think about the world.