Governance, Politics, and Nationhood Theme Analysis

Written and published during the Cold War, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and in the aftermath of World War II, Cat’s Cradle functions as a comic deconstruction of deep-rooted ideas about nationhood and statesmanship. Humankind’s suffering—represented by the atom bomb and, later, ice-nine—is laid side-by-side with the claims made about the progress and advancement of civilization through Western governance. Approximately half of the novel takes place in San Lorenzo, a rocky (and fictional) island in the Caribbean Sea with a turbulent history. Vonnegut uses San Lorenzo to take a close look at politics and statesmanship, and to draw out some of the foolishness of how society is structured. In particular, the novel uses San Lorenzo to critique governments and political leaders as largely ineffectual and just for show. That is, the ideals that they are meant to embody are often at odds the actual state of the world.

Vonnegut employs San Lorenzo and its multitude of problems as a mirror for his reflections on Western governance—he doesn’t equate San Lorenzo with America, but employs it as a device to examine American attitudes to nationhood, statesmanship, and the rest of the world. San Lorenzo is run-down, with bad infrastructure and a lack of purposeful direction.  In its poor condition, San Lorenzo is a kind of imaginative rendering of the kind of place that a blindly patriotic American might consider to be a backward country, devoid of the promises and riches of America’s capitalist dominance. In a way, this is true. But San Lorenzo exists more to deconstruct any idealized idea of America than to praise it. San Lorenzo is officially a Christian nation—though everyone secretly practices Bokononism—and is staunchly anti-communist. Furthermore, it has a new American ambassador (Horlick Minton) and the faint promise of entrepreneurial business development in the character of H. Lowe Crosby, who travels on the same plane as John, hoping to set up a bicycle factory in San Lorenzo (because he thinks he can run it with cheap labor).

San Lorenzo, then, is more closely allied with American ideals than it seems on first sight. It’s just that, here, these ideals have not translated into any kind of tangible success. Vonnegut thus suggests that these ideals in and of themselves do not constitute a “successful” nation. Though San Lorenzo has the pomp and ceremony of national events, it has nothing really to celebrate. And herein lies Vonnegut’s overarching point: the dominance of a nation like America is not something that people ought to celebrate, because, in a global context, humankind’s suffering and self-destruction remain undiminished. Vonnegut questions what American ideals—or any other ideals, in fact—can truly mean if human beings still have the capacity to kill millions of their own kind through technologies like the atom bomb or ice-nine. The fact of this immense and ever-increasing destructive ability for Vonnegut undermines ideas of good governance and demonstrates a lack of leadership beneath the veneer of economic or military prowess.

Vonnegut also takes satirical aim more generally at political leadership gone wrong. In San Lorenzo, the leadership is largely symbolic and wholly ineffective in improving the lives of the island’s inhabitants. Its history is essentially one of bad leadership. The original leaders, McCabe and Bokonon (both from the West), had to invent an entire religion just to placate their citizens. “Papa” Monzana, the leader of the island when John first arrives, is an aging dictator with no redeeming qualities. Nearing death, he nominates Frank Hoenikker (the son of Dr. Hoenikker) to be the new leader. Frank is too afraid of the responsibility of being Monzana’s successor and farcically passes the opportunity on to John, who is understandably surprised given that he has no credentials nor connection with the island whatsoever. These, then, amount to a vacuum of leadership. The island does technically have a leader at all times, but they never do anything of any worth. The leadership role is filled on an arbitrary basis by whoever seems to be closest to it.

The only instance of seemingly strong leadership comes, ironically, from the American ambassador, Horlick Minton. Towards the end of the book he delivers a speech that attempts to show up the illusions of false leadership and blind obedience to nationhood, and how these can lead to devastation. In this, he proposes that to honor those killed in war “we might best spend the day despising what killed them; which is to say, the stupidity and viciousness of all mankind … Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.”

Minton’s speech provides a clear example of Vonnegut’s main subject in the book: “the stupidity and viciousness of all mankind.” But, though the content of Minton’s speech may be venerable taken in isolation, Vonnegut’s irony shines through in Minton’s description of himself as a “peace-loving American.” Minton speaks to ideals that strive to go beyond nationhood—to argue in favor of the entire human family—but he still falls back on his identity as an American. Given that the atom bomb and its fictional successor, ice-nine, are such dominant presences in the book, alongside the historical context of the novel’s setting and publication (e.g. the Cold War and Vietnam), Minton’s use of “peace-loving” rings hollow and untrue. Vonnegut, then, is suspicious of the grand myths—of progress and peace, for example—that humankind tells itself, and satirizes nationhood and statesmanship to show that these narratives are undermined by the terrible and tragic disasters that humankind maintains the capacity for.