Searching for Kurt Vonnegut
When he was a much younger man (“two wives ago, 250,000 cigarettes ago, 3,000 quarts of booze ago”), Jonah started collecting information for a book he called The Day the World Ended, a recollection of the things Americans had done the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
First on Jonah’s list of Americans was Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the fathers of the A-bomb. But Felix is already dead, his body found in a rocking chair after testing his potent scientific discovery--ice-nine.
Jonah consequently turns to Hoenikker’s three children--Newt, Franklin, and Angela--and associates such as Dr. Breed.
Jonah’s journey leads him to ponder basic questions of science, such as:
The secret of life--protein, a bartender tells him.
The single thing that stands in the way of military invincibility--mud, a Marine general says.
The “seed” crystal that causes atoms to freeze--ice-nine, says Dr. Breed.
Re-search--something scientists found once but have since lost and are now re-searching for it, an elevator operator says.
And to wonder about religion. Jonah quotes the first sentence in the books of the Bokonon religion: “All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.”
Jonah is the lead character in the Lifeline Theatre production of Cat’s Cradle, the latest in the theater’s efforts to create plays that explore, interpret, and reimagine books and other literary works.
Cat's Cradle - Lifeline Theatre
As a walk on the dark side of science and technology and America’s role as science and tech leader, the play couldn’t be more relevant. “Science and technology will always move forward, but humans must consider the consequences of progress. Challenging the American ego is still at the forefront of our discussions today in 2023,” said play director Heather Currie.
As irreverent burlesque and lampoon, the play lets laughter lead to insight. “Satire still helps us laugh when looking at the dark parts of being human. At the heart of this story is…who are we as humans, and how can we do better?” she added. Casting Announced For Lifeline Theatre's Adaptation Of Vonnegut's Classic CAT'S CRADLE (broadwayworld.com)
And it leads many of us to take a long look at Kurt Vonnegut. “The return of Cat's Cradle is an opportunity for us to revisit Vonnegut's story and explore its themes and relevance for a new generation,” said Lifeline Artistic Director Ilesa Duncan. (Cat’s Cradle runs through September and into October. Cat's Cradle - Lifeline Theatre)
Kurt Vonnegut--Early Chicago Connections
Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1922 and spent most of his life in New York City. He did, however, live in Chicago for two years just after he returned from fighting in Europe in WW II. Vonnegut was one of about 50 members of the 106th Infantry Division who fought in the 1944 Battle of the Bulge, were captured by German soldiers, and imprisoned in a POW camp near Dresden. During the fierce Allied bombing of the city in early 1945, Vonnegut survived by hiding in an underground meat locker. Days afterward, he and other POWs were forced to search the city ruins for survivors and remove dead bodies until they were evacuated and eventually released. https://www.nvam.org/
Vonnegut enrolled in the University of Chicago’s anthropology program in 1945 but left two years later without finishing his master’s degree thesis. In the 1960s he resumed work on the thesis, called Fluctuations between Good and Ill Fortune in Simple Tales, but still did not receive the degree. U of C professors rejected the thesis, saying that he “had not done any work that qualified as ‘anthropology.’ Interestingly, the university granted the master’s degree in 1970, accepting Cat’s Cradle as a substitute for a formal thesis. Kurt Vonnegut in Chicago: Some Footnotes – Chicago Magazine
While in Chicago, Vonnegut wrote for the City News Bureau and chronicled the experience in Slaughterhouse Five, noting that he earned $28 a week as a police reporter and covered the courts, police stations, Fire Department and Coast Guard on Lake Michigan, connecting “to the institutions that supported us by means of pneumatic tubes which ran under the streets of Chicago.” (Slaughterhouse-Five)
Current Chicago Current Connections
Vonnegut was featured last year as one of the Chicago-based American Writers Museum’s American Voices exhibit and podcast. The November, 2022, post explores Vonnegut’s perspective on war and the meaning of life, citing:
“When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon,
‘It is done.’
People did not like it here.”--From “Requiem,” in A Man Without a Country (2005)
The museum also highlights Vonnegut’s ubiquitous “So it goes”: “They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in the war. Rosewater, for instance, had shot a fourteen-year-old fireman, mistaking him for a German soldier. So it goes. And Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history, which was the fire-bombing of Dresden. So it goes.”--From Slaughterhouse Five
In a recent AWM podcast The Writer’s Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse-Five, author Tom Roston wonders whether Vonnegut had PTSD by looking at Vonnegut’s published writings as well as drafts of the novel Slaughterhouse Five and conducting interviews with those close to him--family and friends--and those who study his work. Episode 72: Tom Roston - The American Writers Museum
In 2016 the National Veterans Art Museum added 50 screen prints of Vonnegut sketches to its permanent exhibit collections. The exhibit includes sketches Vonnegut produced for books, such as Slaughterhouse Five, The Sirens of Titan, and Breakfast of Champions. Museum Curator Ash Kyrie writes on the museum’s website about Vonnegut and the exhibit, reflecting on his own war experience: “The complex and alienating experience I then had coming home from Iraq speaks largely the same as a Vietnam, Revolutionary, or Trojan war veteran had returning after their respective conflicts. Leave the dates out of it and the stories begin to look similar, from Homer's The Odyssey to Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, to the experiences of contemporary Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
“Vonnegut's wit and deceptively simple line drawings breathe fresh life into these timeless narratives. His humor and artistic license reveal just as much as a battle tale redux. As the writer Isabel Allende once stated, “What's truer than the truth? The story.” https://www.nvam.org/vonnegut.html
https://www.nvam.org/vonnegut.html
Vonnegut in Cat’s Cradle and His Own Words
As Jonah delves into Dr. Hoenikker’s last days, he learns that the theoretical solution to eliminate the bane of the Marine Corps--mud--actually exists. And he worries about it. If a Marine drops a seed of ice-nine into the nearest puddle, what happens? It would freeze.
And the pools and streams feeding the puddle? They would freeze.
And the rivers and lakes the streams fed? They would freeze.
And the oceans that…? They would freeze.
And the rain when it fell? It would freeze.
“And that would be the end of the world!” (Chapter 22)
Vonnegut’s views on nature and science were prescient and cautionary. In an imaginary letter to Earthlings of 2088, he wrote in 1988:
“The sort of leaders we need now are …those with the courage and intelligence to present to the world what appear to be Nature’s stern but reasonable terms:
1. Reduce and stabilize your population
2. Stop poisoning the air, the water, and the topsoil.
3. Stop preparing for war and start dealing with your real problems.
4. Teach your kids, and yourselves, too, while you’re at it, how to inhabit a small planet without helping to kill it.
5. Stop thinking science can fix anything if you give it a trillion dollars.
6. Stop thinking your grandchildren will be OK no matter how wasteful or destructive you may be, since they can go to a nice new planet on a spaceship. That is really mean and stupid.
7. And so on. Or else. (Vonnegut: Fates Worse than Death, G. P. Putnam, 1991.
About that Cat’s Cradle
How to Play The Cat's Cradle Game (with Pictures) - wikiHow
The Cat’s Cradle string game is one of the oldest and most common games played by children around the world. It takes on many names. It is known in Africa as The Spider’s Web, in the Americas and Asia as Cat’s Cradle, and in Japan as Kapkap. It also takes on many different symbolic meanings. In Inuit culture, it represents the Northern lights, and in Asia, it represents life’s difficulties. Its most common themes are connectedness, power and control, and the cycle of life. (What Does the Cat’s Cradle Symbolize? Unraveling the Meaning Behind this Intricate Game, August 4, 2023 by Danis Taufiq)
In Vonnegut’s novel, Felix Hoenikker fashions a cat’s cradle out of string and shows it to his son, singing “Rockabye catsy, in the tree top. When the wind blows, the cray-dull will rock. If the bough breaks, the cray-dull will fall. Down will come cray-dull, catsy and all.” (Chapter 7)
Later, observers are debating the significance of Newt’s painting of the cat’s cradle:
One says it’s hell.
Newt’s sister Angela thinks it’s ugly, but she notes, she doesn’t know anything about modern art.
Jonah suggests the picture represents the meaningless of it all.
Newt concludes: “It’s garbage--like everything else.”
The beauty of Vonnegut’s work and Cat’s Cradle, is meaning resides with the reader.
Sources:
Cat's Cradle - Lifeline Theatre)
Kurt Vonnegut in Chicago: Some Footnotes – Chicago Magazine
Episode 72: Tom Roston - The American Writers Museum
https://www.nvam.org/vonnegut.html
(What Does the Cat’s Cradle Symbolize? Unraveling the Meaning Behind this Intricate Game, August 4, 2023 by Danis Taufiq)