Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Cat’s Cradle, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Science and Morality
Religion
Governance, Politics, and Nationhood
Absurdity and Meaninglessness
Summary
Analysis
The narrator, John, who also calls himself Jonah, explains that as a younger man he intended to write a book about “what important Americans had done on the day when the first atomic bomb was dropped.” It was to be a Christian book, he says; now, he is a Bokononist. Bokononists believe humanity is organized into teams—a “karass”—that “do God’s Will without ever discovering what they are doing.”
Immediately, Vonnegut introduces the end-of-times atmosphere by placing the atom bomb front and center in the book. The way John talks about “then” and “now” creates the sense that there are terrible events approaching with inevitable momentum. This sets up the novel as a work of eschatology—a text that deals with the end of the world.
Themes
