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
Engrossed, John reads about Bokonon’s theory of “dynamic tension.” John laughs to himself, thinking that the phrase is accidentally the same as one used by a “mail-order muscle-builder.” Then he reads that Bokonon was in fact an alumnus of that muscle-building school. Dynamic tension is the belief that “good societies could be built only by pitting good against evil, and by keeping the tension between the two high at all times.”
Bokonon’s religious framework is laughably arbitrary. But this belies a serious point: that all religions are invented. The dynamic tension theory is less a genuine plan for society than a description of how things already are.
Themes
