Cat's Cradle: Difference between revisions

And then everything goes completely to hell.

 

* [[Aliens in Cardiff]]: Ice-nine is invented in Illium, NY.

** There's no such place, but "Ilium" was another name for "Troy", and there is a Troy, NY.

** Scientists have actually found new ways for water molecules to arrange themselves in crystals and have named these forms with the same convention (Ice-One, Ice-Two, etc). So there is an ACTUAL Ice-Nine at this point, but neither it nor any of the other man-made ice-crystal formations have the apocalyptic features of the one in the book.

* [[Author Tract]]: Readers of this book will not have a hard time figuring out how Vonnegut feels about the atomic bomb, or about scientific research without giving any consideration to the possible consequences.

* [[Becoming the Mask]]: This happens to President Earl McCabe. [[Lampshaded]] by Bokonon in "Between Time and Timbuktu" when Bokonon repeats the line, "We are who we pretend to be, so we must be very careful who we pretend to be."

* [[Believing Their Own Lies]]: Bokonon and Earl McCabe, rulers of the fictional West Indian country San Lorenzo, create a new religion, Bokononism, in order to ease the suffering of the people. To increase the new religion's appeal to the masses by giving them some entertaining drama, McCabe outlaws its practice upon pain of death (while practicing it in secret), whereupon Bokonon "flees" into the jungle, a "wanted" man. Over time, however, the two men become so habituated to their respective roles in the charade that they go insane and become enemies for real. {{spoiler|Though when "Papa" Monzano (Mc Cabe's successor) dies, he rejects the Christian Last Rites - having declared Christianity the official religion of San Lorenzo - because "I have always been a Bokononist."}}

[[Category:Lit Fic]]

[[Category:The Sixties]]

[[Category:Literature]]