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    A Study Guide for Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle"
    A Study Guide for Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle"
    A Study Guide for Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle"
    Ebook56 pages39 minutes

    A Study Guide for Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateMar 14, 2016
    ISBN9781535826983
    A Study Guide for Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle"

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      A Study Guide for Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" - Gale

      09

      Cat's Cradle

      Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

      1963

      Introduction

      Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was published in 1963. While Vonnegut felt that science fiction was too limiting a genre description, Cat's Cradle probably fits in that genre most accurately. It is an imaginative fantasy, in which the exact date and time are not clearly established, as is common with science fiction. The novel's plot reflects the cold war atmosphere of the early 1960s, when it seemed that any minute the escalating march toward larger and more deadly weapons might lead to war and the possible massive destruction of whole cities and populations. The title of the novel is taken from a children's game, for which there is no solution. This title reflects the novel's focus on the nature of so-called scientific progress, which puts the world at risk for annihilation. Vonnegut uses satire, irony, and parody to question the integrity and responsibility of scientists who create weapons with no thought to their destructive powers or how they might be used. He also parodies religion as a cure-all for the people and a means by which leaders are able to calm their subjects and allow them to exist happily amid poverty, disease, and destruction. Even the location that serves as a setting for Vonnegut's novel, San Lorenzo, is a parody of the island nations of the Caribbean that are ruled by ambitious wealthy men.

      In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut's fourth novel, the careless use of ice-nine, a weapon capable of destroying all life, serves as a warning about the drawbacks of technology. Although Vonnegut's 1969 novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, made him a bestselling author, Cat's Cradle has remained a favorite of readers, who find that in this novel, Vonnegut's warning that truth is only an illusion, captures the essence of 1960s social rebellion. Dial Press has begun reissuing Vonnegut's novels, including Cat's Cradle, which was reissued in 2006.

      Author Biography

      Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father, Kurt Vonnegut, Sr., was a successful architect. His mother, Edith Sophia Lieber, was the daughter of a brewer. Vonnegut was the youngest of the family's three children. Vonnegut grew up not knowing that the family was originally from Germany. Even though they were fourth generation Americans, anti-German sentiment following World War I caused Vonnegut's family to hide their heritage. Vonnegut graduated from Shortridge High School in Indianapolis in 1940. Although he wanted to study journalism in college, he enrolled at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, as a biochemistry major. Vonnegut's father felt that his son would have a better future in biochemistry than as a writer. While at Cornell, Vonnegut became a writer and editor for the university newspaper. In the middle of his junior year at college, Vonnegut dropped out of school and enlisted in the army. It was 1942 and the United States was at war. Vonnegut was assigned to an infantry battalion and trained as a mechanical engineer. He returned home on Mother's Day 1944, to discover that the evening before, his mother had committed suicide by swallowing sleeping pills. Three months later, Vonnegut was sent overseas, and in December 1944, he was captured by German troops during the Battle of the Bulge. As a prisoner of war, Vonnegut worked in a slaughterhouse in Dresden. On February 13, 1945, Dresden was annihilated by a firestorm of bombs that killed 135,000 people in about two hours. Vonnegut and other prisoners of war survived because they were locked in a cold meat locker three stories beneath the slaughterhouse. After the night of bombing, the prisoners emerged from their shelter to discover that the city and all its people had vanished in the firestorm. Vonnegut spent the next several weeks

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