Cat's Cradle is a satirical postmodern novel, with science fiction elements, by American writer Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut's fourth novel, it was first published on March 18, 1963, exploring and satirizing issues of science, 展开

Plot devices
The first-person everyman narrator, a professional writer introducing himself as Jonah (but apparently named John and never named again), frames the plot as a flashback. Set in the mid-20th century, the plot revolves around a … 展开

After World War II, Kurt Vonnegut worked in the public relations department for General Electric research company. GE hired scientists and let them do pure research, and his job was … 展开

• The narrator is a writer who claims his parents named him John but begins the book by stating "Call me Jonah", alluding to the first line of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick ("Call … 展开

Many of Vonnegut's recurring themes are prevalent in Cat's Cradle, most notably the issues of free will and man's relation to technology. The former is … 展开

Like most of Vonnegut's work, irony, morbid humor, and parody are used heavily throughout. Cat's Cradle, despite its relatively short length, contains 127 discrete chapters, some of which are verses from the Book of Bokonon. Vonnegut himself … 展开

The semi-humorous religion secretly practiced by the people of San Lorenzo, called Bokononism, encompasses concepts unique to the novel. Many of these concepts use words … 展开