In his novel Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut parades a circus of instability around one central, sane, character. The narrator, John, is researching a book about what certain Americans were doing on the day the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. One of these individuals is Dr. Felix Hoenikker, the father of the atom bomb. In researching him, John contacts an array of characters including the Doctor's disoriented children, the dictator of a Caribbean island nation, and the founder of an admittedly false religion. The underlying t

Dr. Felix Hoenikker, like most of Vonnegut's characters, is not all together sane. He epitomizes the mad scientist mindset that is displayed in technological advancement. He has no regard for people, completely indifferent to everyone, including his own family. When his wife died, he never bothered to mark her grave with a tombstone, and his teen-aged daughter, a sophomore in high school, had to drop out in order to take care of her brothers and her father. While touring the facility where Dr. Hoenikker did the bulk of his research, John asked a former coworker of Hoenikker if she had known him, to which she replied: "I don't think he was knowable. I mean, when most people talk about knowing somebody a lot or a little, they're talking about secrets they've been told or haven't been told. They're talking about intimate things, family things, love things. ...Dr. Hoenikker had all those things in his life, the way every living person has to, but they weren't the main things with him. ...the main thing with Dr. Hoenikker was truth." (Cat's Cradle, p54)

Through his investigations, John learns that before dying, Dr. Hoenikker had made one final discovery. He found a way to make ice remain frozen at room temperature. The secret was that by changing the molecular buildup of water, it's physical characteristics would change, and when this new form of water, named Ice-9, is introduced to the normal form, the new form would teach the old to behave like the new. It is with this invention that the rest of the book is focused, eventually leading to a seed of Ice-9 being dropped into the ocean. Life on earth is extinguished, and Vonnegut's portrayal of Dr. Hoenikker's insanity makes one final bold statement on the "helpfulness" of science and technology's further progression.

Another insane character presented in Cat's Cradle is Bokonon, the creator of the religion called Bokononism. Bokononism is a religion that is purposely and admittedly based on lies. The principles of Bokononism are beliefs held to explain how God works in the world. The religion's purpose is not to offer the truth of life, but to use lies to comfort humanity from the burden of existence. Before the novel even begins, Vonnegut presents us the underlying principle of Bokononism, that of the foma, or harmless lies. "Live by the foma that make

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Approximate Word count = 1577
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)