Cats Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut is a complex writer that Paper Masters can help you understand. In a research paper on Cat's Cradle, Paper Masters will explicate this futuristic work of literature and show the depth and breadth of Vonnegut's talent. Don't get frustrated with trying to understand this dystopian novel - get help on your research paper from Paper Masters.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr's writing often defies description. It is difficult to classify his combinations of science fiction, history and satire rolled into a narrative that at times seems devoid of structure, yet somehow holds the entire work together in sheer brilliance. Vonnegut seems obsessed with apocalypse. From the firebombing of Dresden at the end of World War II, an event he witnessed as a POW and turned into his most famous work, Slaughterhouse Five. But in Cat's Cradle (1963), Vonnegut takes another earth-shattering event from World War II, the dropping of the atomic bomb, and extrapolates it into an exploration of the end of the world. Not with fire, but in ice does the world end.

Vonnegut's Apocalyptic Satire

Vonnegut's apocalyptic satire finds many outlets, in themes that would later be taken up by concerned global activists. In "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" (1953), Vonnegut delved into the future of overpopulation, a world where miracle drugs keep people alive for two centuries, leading to a senior citizen tyranny. Comparing these two works demonstrates Vonnegut's ability to extrapolate a future more frightening than we can imagine, laced with satire as if to say that the very fact of the world's teetering on the brink of apocalypse is ridiculous beyond expression. With Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut immediately parodies America's greatest work of fiction.

Cat's Cradle's Plot

But is should also be remembered that Jonah was a reluctant prophet of God. There is more here than a fish story, as this plot will prove. Jonah was commissioned by God to preach repentance to Nineveh. He refused, and tried to escape. It was then that the whale swallowed him. After three days, the fish spit him out on the shore of Nineveh, where Jonah promptly began preaching and converting the city from its sinful ways. Vonnegut is carefully choosing his images here.The two he chooses are:

1. Melville
2. The reluctant prophet

Vonnegut's Jonah is telling a prophecy, about the dangers of science and the mysteries of the universe.