KURT VONNEGUT's CAT'S CRADLE is one of my favorite books.

It is a story about the end of the world, a religion totally based on lies, and about human madness. Its eccentric characters are described with a lot of irony and Vonnegut's typical black humor, which makes you laugh and cry at the same time.

Jonah, whose name is mentioned just once at the beginning, is collecting material for his book, "The Day The World Ended", which is supposed to be about what several important American citizens did when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. During his research about one of the fathers of the bomb, Felix Hoenikker, he meets his three rather strange children. He finds out a lot about their father, an introverted man, who didn't care about his family nor the atomic bomb at all, and just used to play around with anything that interested him.

A main idea recurring permanently throughout the story is the idea of Bokononism, a religion founded by Bokonon on the isle of San Lorenzo. Bokonon and his friend McCabe were cast away on the island where they tried to create a utopia. They soon realized that it was impossible to make its poor population happy, so they decided to establish a dictatorship with McCabe as leader and to give hope to the people by inventing Bokononism. "Bokonon invites us to sing along with him:

San Lorenzo is the place where all the main characters meet. Nobody knows that each of Hoenikker's children owns a piece of ice-nine, their father's last invention which will finally lead to global destruction.

*foma = harmless untruths

Marta Koscielniak | LK Englisch 2001

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