Comparing Slaughterhouse Five 'And' Cat's Cradle

The question of what makes or breaks a revolution is one that persists today. Several movements like the Occupy Wall Street has faded from the public’s eye in the previous years. What differs the Occupy Wall Street from a more successful revolution like the French revolution is the cause behind the revolution and what those revolting believe in. One of the indirect causes of the French revolution was the Agrarian Crisis of 1788-89.(Schwartz) Those that stormed Bastille and brought about the French revolution weren’t concerned with the liberty and freedom but instead they were concerned about survival. Marxist literary theory describes literary works as reflections of the social institutions and hierarchies they were written in. Cat’s Cradle

On the other hand, Slaughterhouse Five uses the time jumps as a way of implying history repeating itself. The key focus of said time jumps center around the protagonist’s experiences in war as well as the bombing of Dresden. Vonnegut’s use of absurd beliefs and interactions between social classes demonstrates a societal system that not only exploits the lower classes but also aims to eradicate them. SO WHAT.
To begin Vonnegut uses absurd beliefs that push the boundaries of believability in both Slaughterhouse Five and Cat’s Cradle. The use of such beliefs is used to emphasize the negative aspects of holding onto an ideology. The term ideology means a way of thought or a strong belief one holds. Thus demonstrating the need for the dissolution of said beliefs not for the sake of free thought but for the sake of survival. A recurring ideology held in Slaughterhouse Five is one’s fate being static. A Tralfamadorian advises Billy to “take it moment by moment, and [he] will find that [they] are all, as [it had] said before, bugs in amber”(Vonnegut 86). The term bug implies a lack of power. In the grand scheme of things, a bug is

Yet, the irony of the advice and the danger of this ideology is that what dooms the bug is not the amber but the bug’s resignation. The ceasing of the bug’s struggles will then allow gravity to pull it deeper and deeper into the amber. Just like how one’s present situation does not doom them, but it is when the person accepts that situation and resigns oneself to that situation does one experience their downfall. Therefore, in Slaughterhouse Five, the Tralfamadorians are doomed not by the fate itself but by their own resignation to that fate. The ideology of resignation or hopelessness appears in Cat’s Cradle after the ice-nine release. The leader of the fictional religion Bokononism advises his followers that “God was surely trying to kill them, possible because He was through with them, and that they should have the good manners to die”(Vonnegut 104). The ideology of Bokononism appears to not only just have a malevolent god but also expects their followers to die to appease it. Not only is this faith sinister but the leader Bokonon is a hypocrite, Bokonon survived until the end of the novel in which he is found writing another chapter in his Book of Bokonon. Bokonon’s actions show how