Cat’s Cradle 1109asks ironically.” Being responsible for writing history
does not mean that others will act responsibly with
the knowledge, but by showing the importance of
that responsibility, both Vonnegut and Jonah reaf-
firm its value.
Margaret Savilonis
ScIence and tecHnoLoGy in Cat’s Cradle
In Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, science is both
revered and reviled. Some characters believe that
scientific research produces knowledge and reveals
truths that are critical to human progress. Oth-
ers are more critical, accusing scientists of think-
ing too much and feeling too little. Yet few can
deny that science has considerable power, which,
unfortunately, often manifests itself in frightening
displays of technological “advances,” such as the
world-ending chemical ice-nine, created in secret by
Dr. Felix Hoenikker and employed to catastrophic
effect as the result of the actions, whether deliberate
or accidental, of various other people. Recounting
the history of events leading up to the cataclysmic
demise of humankind, the novel’s narrator, Jonah,
comes to recognize that it is not, in fact, technol-
ogy that wreaks havoc; rather, it is people, from the
misguided to the misanthropic, who cause damage
by the choices they make about how to use the
knowledge that scientific research yields.
The sanctity of scientific research is enshrined at
the General Forge and Foundry Company in Ilium,
New York, where research laboratories are dedicated
to the development of “new knowledge,” which Dr.
Asa Breed, the company’s vice president in charge of
research, describes as “the most valuable commodity
on earth.” The deceased Dr. Hoenikker’s laboratory
stands untouched, “just as he left it,” and is marked
by a plaque that states, “THE IMPORTANCE
OF THIS ONE MAN IN THE HISTORY OF
MANKIND IS INCALCULABLE.” However, the
wonders he has wrought that make him the patron
saint of scientific progress, though awe-inspiring,
are devastating, from the atomic bomb to his final
creation, ice-nine.
Hoenikker’s parting gift to the world was
inspired by a request from a marine general who “felt
that one of the aspects of progress should be that
Marines no longer had to fight in mud.” Because
the marines did not want to have to carry anything
heavy to eliminate the mud, Breed tells Jonah that
Hoenikker theorized about “a single grain of some-
thing . . . that could make infinite expanses of muck,
marsh, swamp, creeks, pools, quicksand, and mire as
solid as this desk.” Though Breed insists that Hoe-
nikker never managed to create such a substance,
Jonah eventually learns that Hoenikker did succeed,
and that his three children—Frank, Angela, and
Newt—have shards of it in their possession. Ice-nine
is a sort of holy grail, sought after by other scientists
and the leaders of foreign governments, such as
Miguel “Papa” Monzano, the dictator of the island
republic of San Lorenzo, who declares that “science
is the strongest thing there is.”
Such veneration of science fails to take human
error into account as part of the equation, open-
ing the door for the true dangers of new technol-
ogy: pride. Near the end of the novel, when San
Lorenzo’s celebration for the Day of the Hundred
Martyrs to Democracy gets underway, technologi-
cal failures and bad judgment come together in a
catastrophic way. “Papa’s” fervent belief in the power
of science leads him to commit suicide by ingest-
ing ice-nine, an act that precipitates the end of the
world. As six airplanes performing an aerial display
approach “Papa’s” castle, one of them crashes into
a cliff, resulting in an explosion that causes mas-
sive structural damage, ultimately sending “Papa’s”
ice-nine-riddled corpse into the ocean, creating a
“grand AH-WHOOM” as the “moist green earth
[becomes] a blue-white pearl.”
Thus, Hoenikker’s diabolical creation, conceived
as a way to simplify modern warfare by getting rid
of the muck and the mire, proves to be remark-
ably successful. Yet the irony at the heart of this
destruction is the failure to recognize that mud,
though irritating, is necessary. Before he dies, “Papa”
Monzano receives the last rites of the Bokononist
faith, a religion created by Lionel Boyd Johnson,
who adopted the name Bokonon. Bokononism has
been outlawed in San Lorenzo, but it is practiced
by almost all of the island’s inhabitants, including
“Papa” himself. While performing the ritual, “Papa”
and Dr. Schlich ter von Koenigswald chant: “ ‘God
made mud . . . God got lonesome . . . So God said
to some of the mud, ‘Sit up!’ . . . And I was some of