Cat’s Cradle 1107the unleashing of ice-nine on the world in the light
of the philosophies of the spiritual leader Bokonon
by delineating concepts such as that of the karass,
the belief that “humanity is organized into teams
. . . that do God’s Will without ever discovering
what they are doing,” Jonah offers an examination
of the paradoxical role of the individual in society.
Though each individual’s actions are significant, the
individual is never truly singular; rather, each person
functions in direct relation to others in a complex
network of action and reaction. Thus, “society” is a
dynamic construct that both shapes and is shaped by
all of the individuals who comprise it.
Throughout the novel, recurring images of the
“complicated and unpredictable machinery of life”
establish the idea that society and individuals are
interdependent. For example, although Hoenik-
ker is responsible for the creation of ice-nine, its
legacy depends on his children’s handling of it,
which is, in turn, informed by their relationships
with other people, including a Russian spy, a power-
hungry dictator, and a scientist seeking lucrative
government contracts. As the “tendrils of [his] life”
intertwine with Hoenikker’s three children—the
midget Newt, fugitive Frank, and “great big, gawky”
Angela—Jonah learns that they have all used the
lethal compound to gain something for them-
selves—a romantic tryst, a fancy job, and a husband,
respectively. The Hoenikkers’ choices are informed
by their desire to fit into society by acquiring love
and power; at the same time, their choices affect the
path society takes because by allowing ice-nine to fall
into the hands of rival governments, they contribute
to the “dynamic tension” that Bokonon argues is
necessary for the successful creation of “good societ-
ies,” which can “be built only by pitting good against
evil, and by keeping the tension between the two
high at all times.”
Yet society’s conception of “good and evil,” par-
ticularly as it is manifested in notions of national
identity, is called into question by the Bokononist
idea of the granfalloon, a “seeming team that was
meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things
done,” including “any nation, anytime, anywhere.”
Giving his speech at the celebration in honor of the
Hundred Martyrs to Democracy, Horlick Minton,
the U.S. ambassador to San Lorenzo, asserts that in
order to truly honor the sacrifice individuals make
by going to war, society must work “consciously and
tirelessly to reduce the stupidity and viciousness
of ourselves and of all mankind.” Minton’s subse-
quent reflection on the slogan “PRO PATRIA,”
emblazoned on the wreath he has brought for the
ceremony, emphasizes a fundamental flaw in the
ways societies define themselves. Minton notes that
the words mean “ ‘For one’s country’ . . . Any country
at all,” suggesting that good is a relative term, as the
individuals on both sides of a conflict inevitably see
their own society as good and the other as evil.
Though the veneration of society at the expense
of the individual engendered by war demeans the
one thing that is sacred to Bokonon, man, the indi-
vidual impulse to be part of a society is valuable
and necessary. After ice-nine ravages the planet, the
small band of survivors on the island of San Lorenzo
instinctively forms their own society, about which
Hazel Crosby observes, “Each person here had some
specialty, something to give the rest,” allowing the
gears of the universe to churn on. Jonah’s karass,
which has been “working night and day for maybe
half a million years” to get him to the top of Mount
McCabe, the highest point in San Lorenzo, succeeds
as a result of combined effort. And, though Jonah
takes pains to insist that his goal is not to present a
“tract on behalf of Bokononism,” the story he tells
is, in fact, an embodiment of the philosophies of the
religion, his individual contribution to the collective
legacy of humanity: the warning about ignorance,
folly, and shortsightedness that is Cat’s Cradle.
Margaret SavilonisreSponSIbILIty in Cat’s Cradle
At the outset of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle,
the narrator, Jonah, describes the task that has
become central to his life: the research and writing
of a book called The Day the World Ended. Origi-
nally intended to be “an account of what important
Americans had done on the day when the first
atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan,”
Jonah’s tale evolves into a complex history of the
after-effects of that event, culminating in an even
more wide-ranging and literal ending of the world.
Jonah’s story is, in part, a consideration of the inter-
sections of personal and social responsibility, from