Summary Of Cat's Cradle

The narrator of Cat 's Cradle, John, has started to write a book called The Day the World Ended. The book is about the day we dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. In the beginning of his adventure he was a Christian, but now he is a Bokononist. The Bokononist belief is that all of humanity is organized into karasses, teams that carry out God 's will without knowing it. The Books of Bokonon begin with a warning that everything inside is made up of "shameless lies." John 's other book led him to his karass, which includes Frank, Angela, and Newt Hoenikker, the three children of the scientist Felix Hoenikker, one of the scientists who invented the atomic bomb and won a Nobel Prize for it. A while ago, John wrote to Newt, who was then a medical

In the letter, John asked Newt what he remembered the day the atomic bomb was dropped. Newt wrote back and said that he was only six years old that day. He was playing with his toys at his house in Ilium, New York, and his father was playing cat 's cradle with a piece of string. Normally, Felix had was not interested in games created by others. However, a prisoner had (at random) mailed Felix a book he had written about the end of the world, asking about technical ideas about a theoretical bomb.. Felix never read the book, but he was interested in the string tied around it. He never really took interest in even his own family, but that morning he wanted to show Newt how to play cat 's cradle. As Felix neared the little Newt, he looked so ugly and large that Newt burst into tears and ran from the house. Angela, Newt 's sister, has told Newt many times that he hurt his father 's feelings that day, but Newt thinks he couldn 't have hurt him very much. Felix didn 't even remember a lot about Emily, Newt 's mother, after she died. Newt then went to sit with Frank, his brother, who was 12 years old. Frank was busy making bugs in mason jars fight with one another. When Angela asked Frank what he was doing, he responded that he was