Cat's Cradle

By Kurt Vonnegut


Cat’s Cradle is written in Vonnegut’s typical satirical sci-fi style, with a narrator that reveals the plot haltingly and through the lens of his own intensely human voice. The novel deals with the story of the end of the world, but the reader must sift through constant references to a made-up religion, and an almost dizzying number of overlapping, similarly named characters to get there. Still, the book is a fast read even with 127 chapters.

Vonnegut novels, Cat’s Cradle not excepted, always strike me as a paradox; they are undoubtedly entertaining, and I inevitably end up voraciously consuming them within the span of a couple of hours, and yet when I set them down I never feel satisfied. I did not particularly like Cat’s Cradle. The foreshadowing, symbolism, satire, and sarcasm felt heavy handed in several places, but I still found myself reading instead of enjoying a lake with my friends. Maybe that’s what Vonnegut is going for: the expression of discontent.