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
Continuing the story, Angela says she assumed Dr. Hoenikker was just sleeping in his chair, but was dead. While she decorated the Christmas tree, Newt and Frank came in with the dog. Frank wiped some water of the floor with a rag, and threw it in the pan, which contained ice-nine. It turned into something like a “finely-woven gold mesh.” Frank held down the pan nine for Newt to see, thinking it was cake frosting. Newt likens the ice-nine to his “mother’s reticule.” As he did so, the dog licked the rag and “froze stiff.” Newt went to tell his father, and found that “his father was stiff, too.”
The dog is representative of the innocent victims of war and technological advances in the instruments of war. Dead people in the novel often have their “stiffness” emphasized, underlining the physical fact of their deadness in an unsentimental way.
Themes
