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
John observes that none of his guests know that he is to be president, or how close to death “Papa” is. Philip puts it to John that he might call “a general strike of all writers until mankind finally comes to its sense.” John doesn’t agree with this idea, asking Julian how people would die when “deprived of the consolations of literature.” Julian says either by “putrescence of the heart or atrophy of the nervous system.”
Here, Vonnegut turns his absurdist satire back on himself and the reader. Just as religion, science and government have been exposed as deeply flawed, literature and art fares no better.
Themes
