See the cat? See the cradle?

I just finished Cat's Cradle, my third Vonnegut this summer and a close favorite just ahead of Slaughterhouse-5. The images in Cat's Cradle are just so preposterous and funny, but so unerringly true. The San Lorenzan puppet monarchy, the whole ice-nine apocalypse, and the dead on takes on sex and relationships all are true and revealing. In fact, it is Vonnegut's ease with symbols, the eponymous child's game of the title, in particular, that really give this book its thematic punch. He uses it a bunch of ways, but in all cases, they really hit the mark in terms of summing up the human experience as we know it. But these are just generalities, let's look at a solid cases. Take, for example, the image of little Newt Hoenikker riffing on the Bokononist religion at the end of chapter eight-one.

Little Newt snorted. "Religion!"
"Beg your pardon?" Castle said.
"See the cat?" asked Newt. " See the cradle?"

You can see him holding each hand up parallel to the other and grinning. The image of the cat's cradle, the structure composed of interlocking strings between your fingers, is pretty relevant, and testament to the genius of Vonnegut. All constructs- here he picks on religion, but love and marriage and work and organized sports, for that matter, all could fall under the symbolic auspices of it, too- are composed of these metaphysical strings and fingers. In most cases, the things we hold most dear can be melted down to this metaphysical shell game. Without faith, baby, there ain't no religion. No cat in there. No cradle. Just strings. We hold it together.

A friend told me about a woman who makes her own reality, her own happiness, out of the rather meager crumbs she has to work with. I thought of this while reading the book, because I think in some ways we all do this. It only really starts to crumble when we begin to question the reality we construct. If we let our rational sides take over, all hell breaks loose, and the cradle falls apart. I suppose the happier people are the ones who cherish the cat's cradle of their own making. I've done it. We've all done it. The question of the hour is: How long can it be kept up?

Of course that doesn't help me much now. I'm trying to work through some things, and the idea of it all being smoke and mirrors, strings and fingers, is thoroughly depressing. I guess you have to work on Vonnegut in the right frame of mind. He is very funny, but the humor cuts close to the bone, so when you laugh you kind of wince, too. At least I did- whatever that means.

Maybe I am in the right frame of mind, after all.