Assess The Significance Of The Title Cat's Cradle

In Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle the novel is highlighting the idea of humans need to create a meaning in everything out of a universe without meaning. This may be explored to the religion of Bokononism, being aware of the world being meaningless but still creating a purpose to the person. Further highlighted in Ice-Nine creating the life giving material as Bokononism tells it to be and destroying it, getting rid of the meaning of mud. As well as the metaphor of the novels title Cat’s Cradle, about the simple childish game of string being organized and complicated in a chaotic meaningless existence. Aiming to demonstrate to the reader that Vonnegut has shown the novel to be a history about mans search for a meaning or purpose in a meaningless world

The idea of a cat’s cradle is thought of odd and strange to some people in the Cat’s Cradle, saying “A cat’s cradle is nothing but a bunch of Xs in between someone’s hands”. Emphasizing upon the idea that, that is all life is a simple control of chaos into an organized pattern that either we as humans or God created so we can understand, although left open for the reader to interpret. Additionally, the cat’s cradle also embodies that the world that humans have created and understood is built upon lies and narratives, with all forms of measurements are made only for us to comprehend the madness the universe is. Furthermore, near the end of the novel Jhon comment on the world that has gone mad with greed, war and brutality saying its “like a game of cat's cradle”. Highlighting that even when the world is destroyed when there is nothing to fight over humanity still does so, they will all eventually die so it is meaningless, but they still fight hoping do find a meaning and purpose in this now destroyed world. When John read the books of Bokonon he reflects on his childhood and he “began to make a cat's cradle between my fingers”. Vonnegut perhaps used this to highlight the nostalgic and playful nature of the cat’s cradle and how it goes back to the first creation of man by mud, our first words to God were searching for a purpose with the instinctual act of making a cat’s cradle relating to this. Further proving that the addition of cat’s cradles in the novel relate back to the initial message by Vonnegut that the search of purpose or meaning in a meaningless world is a search never to find an