Cat's Cradle Book Meaning

Cats Cradle is a story of the interweaving tendrils of fate of the world and the people in the play of life just as a cats cradle is the interweaving of stringsthey both make purpose of something usually devoid of meaning.

Cat's cradle book meaning. This quote encompasses the satiric postmodern themes of absolute truth in Vonneguts Cats Cradle. The story is comprised of several themes including war and love. The use of cats in the cradle to describe something dangerous appears to come from an old wives tale that if allowed into its crib a cat would kill an infant by sucking out its breath.

In a literal sense a cats cradle is a game played with string in which each player must maneuver their fingers to create different images one of which is the cats cradle. The web of life is a process with a moving goal. Hoenikkers youngest son points out there is no cat and there is no cradleits just string.

The fictionalized religion of Bokononism in Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut satirically remarks on belief systems and society as a whole. In his story Vonnegut first brings to question the government and the way in which it is overseen in the book but also in reality. For purposes of research he wrote to Newt Hoenikker the midget son of Felix Hoenikker the Nobel prize-winning physicist and one of the fathers of the atomic bomb.

The web of life is a beautiful and meaningless dance. Other sources speculate that perhaps it is a reference to an old myth that cats steal the breath of babies in the cradle killing. All this stuff about the book meaning that life is arbitrary and meaningless is not everything I got from it.

Others can only see the Xs made of string because thats the truth of the matterbut that might just make them crazy. Cats Cradle Delta Books 1998. It is a game using an endless string a loop six feet in.

That certainly sounds far-fetched today but it was a commonly held superstition back in the 1600s and 1700s. The meaning is unclear but many sources speculate that it is a reference to a popular childrens game. The theme of the cats cradle is used throughout the book to represent many of the truths as viewed by Vonnegut that are found in society.