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
The rites are conducted in the Bokononist dialect, which John translates for the reader. This litany expresses the story of humankind’s creation, which starts with God, having made “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars,” making some of the world’s mud “sit up” and become human.
In the Bokononist religious structure, man is no more important than mere mud. Mud, of course, ties in with the original purpose of ice-nine—to solve the problem of mud faced by US marines. The apocalypse brought by ice-nine thus solves the “problem” both types of mud—literal and metaphorical.
Themes
Dr. Koenigswald continues. The mud praised God’s creation, and feels “very unimportant” in comparison. But human mud should be grateful for getting to “sit up and look around,” as most mud never got to do so.
This ties in with humankind’s longing for meaning, which Vonnegut suggests is most often a fruitless task.
Themes
