Satire, Surrealism and Dark Humor in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle
"And there on the shaft in letters six inches high, so help me God, was the word:
Mother" (48)
"'If that's mother,' said the driver, 'what in hell could they have raised over father?'"
As the reader soon finds out, 40 cm of marble, as directed by Felix Hoenikker's will, that says "FATHER" (49). Vonnegut stops you short and plucks at your hand like a little boy who has just shaved the cat and can't wait to show you what he's done: you can't, as a responsible adult, laugh at the absurdity of the bald and shivering feline because you know that you should be astonished, offended, annoyed, anything but burst out laughing, which you desperately desire to do. Vonnegut acts as Wrang-Wrang in this scene; two men in an ice storm, marveling at a towering alabaster penis given in memoriam to a mother by her children.
Vonnegut's use of the surreal (and, by the way, this is also an episode of, if not dark, then very twisted humor) in the scene discourages the reader's scrutiny so that Vonnegut can slip his point across without notice. What point? Possibly, and this could be just me thinking aloud, the scene describes the strength of the mother and the dual roles she had to play; the father was also a child, as simple and pure in his intellectual ecstasy as, well, a marble cube. "The marker was an alabaster phallus twenty feet high and three feet thick" (48), Vonnegut crows, inviting you to stand in the cold with him and wonder with the driver exactly what in hell is going on…
Satire is thrown into CC early and often, so much that it seems almost unfairly easy to extract examples, but it is such an integral component of the novel that it requires at least a look-see.
One of my favorite parts of the book is the scene on the airplane where Jonah meets not one but two stereotypical "Ugly Americans," a term coined by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick in the title of their 1958 novel of the same name.
The Mintons are well educated, speaking "six or seven" (65) languages between the two of them but see the people and places they have seen during their diplomatic careers as "About the same" (65). They are what Bokonon calls a duprass that will, as Jonah points out, die at very nearly the same time when the world is overcome by ice-nine.
One form of satire that particularly stands out is his use of diction. Both speakers are so focused on oppresing on the other group that they allow emotions to invade their arguments. For example in
However, during the 16th and 17th century, being a witch was not a good or fun experience. Being a witch, or accused of being one, ended up in the execution of the accused. Many individuals were accused of witchcraft and executed because local officials and governors wanted to get wealthy as well as to clean up their community, they were women, and because the communities needed a scapegoat for all of the negative things that were happening at the time. Due to the fact that the communities during this time were so religious, the scripture may have been a major reason that so many people believed in witches and why a number of accusations, as well as executions, went up. There is little to no doubt that almost all of those executed were innocent of witchcraft even if they had been guilty of something else such as robbery or
Everything is constantly changing over time and one of the things that has changed drastically is our society's view on Witchcraft. It started out as being a regular religion but was more negatively talked about as the years went by. Society’s view on Witchcraft never really changed but our morals as people did. We have accepted that it is a religion and
The Hutu’s saw Rwanda as their country and nobody else’s. They had a list of commandments written and for Hutu’s. It was strictly for the justification of the killing of the Tutsi’s. Many Tutsi’s were murdered and the ones that could get away fled to Uganda. Some Tutsi’s revolted and created a guerilla army in pure ressentiment. Hutu’s model was they were catholic and just and the Tutsi’s were communist and they must be exterminated. In one of the scenes in In the Name of God it shows a moment where a Hutu revolt is listening to the Hutu primarily radio show and the radio host is speaking on how Tutsi people are forbidden and they are cockroaches and they need to be exterminated. In the documentary In the Name of God it is a great representation of what occurred in 1994 in Rwanda, and the experiences of the Hutu and Tutsi people. It also shows what led to the disaster of the genocide was that the Christian Democratic International would not negotiate with sharing their power with RPF (guerilla army) or exile
According to Frederick Asals, the first half of the story serves a significant purpose as it informs the audience that the family’s journey to Florida is only a “mere empty movement through space” (42). Prior to the car accident, the family acts out of vanity and disobedience despite believing they are devote Christians. Through their actions and behaviors, O’Connor reveals that they are heading down a path of destruction. T.W. Hendricks examines the structure of the family and their relationships with each other, he comments that “the structure of the family is in disarray” (203). The patriarch of the family, Bailey, despises his mother and prefers to overlook her presence by participating in self-absorption. In comparison, his wife does not pay attention to her external surroundings, but simply puts sole focus on her infant child. Furthermore, she and her husbands are parents t...
Brown, Earl B., Jr. "Kosinski's Modern Proposal: The Problem of Satire in the Mid-Twentieth Century." Ebscohost. N.p., 1980. Web. Mar.-Apr. 2014.
Witchcraft has been in practice for centuries upon centuries, having been traced back to the beginning of mankind, where it was seen as a religious practice that instilled magical rights upon the user (Witchcraft). Prehistoric art exemplifies this, with inscriptions detailing magical rites that were used to ensure that their hunting was successful (Wiccan One’s Universe). Witches were commonplace all over the world with different stigmas and stereotypes attached to them from each respectful culture that contained them. The belief in magic predated Christianity, Judaism, and recorded history, and over time magic became mainly associated with one group - Witches (Erzulie). This could have been due to the fading out of many other ancient religions as well as the growing popularity that Witchcraft gained from incorporating man...
The Rwandan Genocide was a terrible event in history caused by a constantly weakening relationship between two groups of people. The country of Rwanda is located in Africa and consists of multiple groups of people. Majority of Rwanda is Hutu, while a smaller amount of people are Tutsis. The genocide started due to multiple events that really stretched the relationship between the two groups to its end. One of the starting factors was at the end of World War 1. Rwanda was a German colony but then was given to Belgium “who favored the minority Tutsis over the Hutus, exacerbated[exacerbating] the tendency of the few to oppress the many”(History.com). This created a feeling of anger towards the Tutsis, because they had much more power then Hutus.
For many centuries to the present day, Christians have lived in fear of witches. They were known as to be the devils child who only practiced black magic and thought of as the Christians “persecution”. Witches have been known to mankind since the 1200’s. Throughout the 1400’s, the examination of witches was more focus and moved from the Jews. In the church’s law, it was stated that the belief of existence and practices of witchcraft was “heresy”. Because of what the Christians believed, churches would then torture and hunt down anyone who they thought were witches and killed the many women and only a few of the men. They even made them make the confession of flying through the midnight sky, being in love with the devil himself, practicing black magic and even turning into animals.
John Marwood Cleese, an English actor, comedian, writer and film producer said, “If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge its truth”. The point he brings up is the ideology of satire. Satire, by definition, is a technique utilized by writers to expose and criticize foolishness and corruption of an individual or a society. This can be done by using humor, irony, exaggeration or ridicule ("Satire - Definition and Examples", para.1). Often times, the humor used opens the audiences’ minds to the underlying problem that the writer is trying to reveal. By examining the purpose and methods of satire, dissecting literary works, and displaying examples in the media, satire is shown to be a valuable tool.
Kurt Vonnegut said in The Vonnegut Statement (1973), in an interview with Robert Scholes, that one of his reasons for writing is "to poison minds with humanity…to encourage them to make a better world" (107). This idea works quite well in Vonnegut's book, Cat's Cradle. It is a satirical story of a man's quest to write a book about the day the world ended (refering to the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima), which he never finishes. What we get is a raw look at humans trying desperately to find a sense of purpose in their lives through different means such as religion, science, etc.
The history of Rwanda is very interesting. Rwanda is located in East Africa, in East africa people were not treated as equal. Today eastern africa is way different from how it is now. Back int the 1996s the africans faced many problems. Some of the problems include how the Tutsi people were treated and also how the Hutu people. Genocide was a big problem in Rwanda.
"No one is born a racist bigot. In other words, racial bigotry or racial prejudice is not genetically or
In 1994 in Rwanda, a million members of the Tutsi tribe were killed by members of the Hutu tribe in a massacre that took place while the world looked away. "Hotel Rwanda" is not the story of that massacre. It is the story of a hotel manager who saved the lives of 1,200 people by being, essentially, a very good hotel manager
...ause the colonial masters believed that they resembled them. It was unethical for the Belgians to interfere with the peaceful coexistence that the two communities had enjoyed in the past. As a result, the Hutus acquired negative misconceptions about the Tutsis’ origin, what they stood for, and what they had done for them in the past. The Hutus expertly planned and organized the Rwandan genocide as a result of such historical distortions created by their country’s colonial masters.