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
After boko-maru, John tells Mona that he loves her. She loves him too, she says. He asks if there is “anyone else” in her life, to which she replies “many.” And there are many, she says, with whom she performs boko-maru.
Mona’s “love” is not specific to John, but more a general love towards all humanity. But it rings a little hollow, based as it is on the “foma” of Bokononism.
Themes
John tries to order Mona to be his and his alone from now on. Tearfully, she says, “I make people happy. Love is good, not bad.” She calls John a “sin-wat,” a Bokononist term for “a man who wants all of somebody’s love.”
John tries to impose his Western monogamy on Mona. Her belief system is almost aligned with the counter-cultural “free love” of Western youth in the 1960s, though this book slightly predates that movement.
Themes
John asks Mona about her boko-maru with the pilot during the ceremony, and whether she used to perform boko-maru with Philip Castle. She insists she will not marry a sin-wat, saying that Bokononist religion instructs that people should love all others “the same.” She asks John what his religion his says; he admits he doesn’t have one, asks if he can become a Bokononist. Mona says, “of course,” and the two become reconciled, once more saying “I love you.”
Bokononism is on the one hand, then, a kind of radical humanist religion—people should love all other people the same. But it’s also a hollow set of principles that its own leader says are lies. This is in keeping with absurdity of the book: the reader will be left wanting if they look for definite principles about what constitutes a good way of living/being.
Themes
