Study Guide: Cat's Cradle (A BookCaps Study Guide)

By BookCaps

The perfect companion to Kurt Vonnegut’s "Cat's Cradle," this study guide contains a chapter by chapter analysis of the book, a summary of the plot, and a guide to major characters and themes.

BookCap Study Guides do not contain text from the actual book, and are not meant to be purchased as alternatives to reading the book.

We all need refreshers every now and then. Whether you are a student trying to cram for that big final, or someone just trying to understand a book more, BookCaps can help. We are a small, but growing company, and are adding titles every month.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookCaps
• Release date: Jan 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465896247

BookCaps

We all need refreshers every now and then. Whether you are a student trying to cram for that big final, or someone just trying to understand a book more, BookCaps can help. We are a small, but growing company, and are adding titles every month.Visit www.bookcaps.com to see more of our books, or contact us with any questions.

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Kurt Vonnegut’s

Cat’s Cradle

By BookCaps Study Guides

© 2011 by Golgotha Press, Inc.

Published at SmashWords

www.bookcaps.com

Historical Context

Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indiana in 1922. Kurt’s father was a wealthy architect, though the depression hit the family hard and Kurt was forced to attend public school, unlike his siblings who had attended private school. He worked for his high school newspaper, and after graduating, he attended Cornell University where he studied biochemistry at the urging of his father and brother. Vonnegut had little interest in science, however, and wrote for the Cornell Daily Sun. Cornell considered expelling Vonnegut for poor grades, so he enlisted in the US Army, which is where he gained a lot of influence for his subsequent writings, especially his most well-known foray, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).

During the 1950s and 1960s, Vonnegut became known for his satirical, dystopian literature which often poked fun at the world’s real issues. In 1963, he published Cat’s Cradle, a novel which took jabs at the arms race, science, technology, and religion amongst others. Vonnegut became inspired to write Cat’s Cradle when he worked for General Electric; his job was to interview scientists, and he observed that the older scientists seldom put much thought or importance into what their inventions may be used for. In Cat’s Cradle the fictional inventor of the atomic bomb is playing a game of cat’s cradle when the bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. In doing this, he seems carefree. Vonnegut submitted Cat’s Cradle as his thesis for his Master’s in Anthropology, after his original idea had been declined; the novel earned him his degree in 1971.

Plot

John is a writer who began to write a book about the day the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He set out to interview his friends, the Hoenikker children, about their father Felix who was responsible for inventing the bomb. He also interviewes a man named Asa Breed who worked in Felix’s lab; Asa tells him about an isotope Felix supposedly created called ice-nine which has the power to, at a drop, turn anything consisting of water into ice. After John sees an ad for an island called San Lorenzo he knows he must go there; he falls in love with the girl, Mona, from the ads. Also, Frank Hoenikker lives there, though everyone thinks him dead. He takes a job writing about a man named Julian Castle who built a hospital on the island.

Once he arrives on the island