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 goes to Frank’s house in a cab, on the slope of Mount McCabe. The house was designed by Mona’s father, Nestor Aamons, and has a terrace over a waterfall. Frank is not yet home, so Stanley, Frank’s servant, shows John to his room.
Vonnegut comically delays John’s conversation with Frank, despite the urgency with which Frank begged John to come to the house.
Themes
The only person in the house is Newt, whom John finds on the terrace. Newt, asleep in a chair, has been working on a painting, which is “small and black and warty.” John wonders if it represents “human futility.” Newt wakes up and explains that the painting is a cat’s cradle. He says it’s no wonder kids grow up crazy; adults show them a bunch of string and call it a cat’s cradle—but there’s “no damn cat, and no damn cradle.”
Newt’s painting is not aesthetically pleasing, but in its ugliness seems to John to represent the meaninglessness of human effort. Newt foregrounds the meaning of the cat’s cradle symbol: it shows humankind’s immense talent for increased complexity (be it scientific, social or cultural) but is ultimately an illusion or trick.
Themes
