Cat's Cradle

I must begin with how much I've come to like this book, despite the short choppy chapters which are a side effect of postmodernism. Also like Dominguez brought up Dr. Hoenikker is probably a personification of pure science, although I don't think he is amoral in as much as he is constantly questioning his environment and his question about "what is sin?" is a legitimate question for another time. in addition to the disbelief in the indeals of the enlightenment and a main recursive narrative that would escape most first time readers, that is the story of a writer writing about the potential for the end of the world, "The Day the World Ended" as the end of the world is closing in around him, hence the recursive bit. On another note the possibility of ice nine is rather interesting a cooling agent so powerful that it freezes on contact and freezes it so that it only melts at 140 degrees is arguably more useful and potentially destructive than atomic warfare. and by useful if ice nine somehow or another had a decay limit where after that it retained part of its strength but lost it powers of cooling then it could be very valuable as a quick but temporary building material like concrete only cheaper and faster. In addition it would allow for the transportation of massive amounts of water. I do realize that is not what Kurt Vonnegut had in mind when he wrote the novel I merely thought I'd play devils advocate and point out the potential benefits of the stuff that causes the end of the world Spoiler alert: mouse over at your own risk.
In the first seven chapters alone there seems to be a subversion of the usual rules of genre construction, in classical literature particularly with Shakespeare there seems to be a binary scheme if you like between tragedy and comedy, and while there are moments in Shakespeare's tragedies that are comic (alas poor Mercutio) and vice versa they are still more or less opposites. In Cat's Cradle the situation is, with Vonnegut's dark humor, much more difficult to pin down what is meant to be funny as opposed to what is meant to be serious. an example, albeit tenuous, is the line in chapter one "When I was a young man two wives, 250,000 cigarettes ago, 3,000 quarts of booze ago..." this either a somewhat funny moment of nostalgia(which just ain't what it used to be) or a morose moment of regret.

Potential Thesis

In reality my thesis will end up being related to the prompt that is decided on in class, as obviously the unasked question cannot be answered. But I have a hunch that the essay will have some basis in either post-modernism and Brave New World, Progress and Brave New World, or point of view and... you get the idea. So then the only logical(Yay gratuitous hyperlinking) thing to do is to word three different ones and then pick based on the prompt. If it is the first topic then I'd probably go with a statement similar to one I made in the blog post concerning it, I.E. That Brave New World is only postmodern in that it is a critique of modernist thought on morality with a few elements of the postmodern I.E. the rapid shifts in points of view in the second chapter, the multiple plot lines. If it the second topic then I would argue that yes Brave New World has progressed more than our society but that does not necessarily make that society better. Finally if the prompt is based on the third option then I would write about the use of third person omniscient and how it creates a more horizontal, less plot driven story. And also how the story itself has two main plots that are surrounded by multiple subplots, a comment on the nature of the society it describes. To back all of these, quotes from the text are in a very real sense the least I could do.


Side Note: I'd love to do a cross media comparison between the matrix and brave new world, or 1984 and Brave New World would also be and interesting point.