Cat's Cradle

“Thus, where Yeats, Eliot, and Joyce sought to restore a deep new purpose, a new sense of design, form and depth, a new sense of primordial origin in myth, Postmodernists often see no reason for a center” (Powell 18). This is one of the central themes of Postmodernism; no center. No absolute truth that is the epicenter of all knowledge. No particular reason why we exist. No religion that satisfies all the questions of every single person. No universal meaning of life.

Cat’s Cradle shares some of these postmodernistic ideas. For example, when John the narrator says “Nowhere does Bokonon warn against a person’s trying to discover the limits of his karass and the nature of the work God Almighty has had it do. Bokonon simply observes that such investigations are bound to be incomplete” (Vonnegut 4). John accepts that there are things happening that are beyond his comprehension. No matter how hard he tries, no matter what he does he will never be able to solve the puzzle of God. So he simply does not try to. People all around him on the other hand do and he ridicules them for attempting something so outlandish.

I think postmodernism also tries to get away from the notion that science can explain everything. This is displayed in the novel, somewhat. Felix who represents science “started playing with [the string]. His fingers made the string figure called a ‘cat’s cradle’” (Vonnegut 11). Cat’s cradle is a string game that is never ending. It just continues to make more and more complex webs and entanglements. Felix who was playing with it represents what science is doing. Science just keeps on delving and delving into more and more complex things in an attempt to explain the simpler things. However, those complex things also need an explanation. So science is a never ending quest for knowledge and some form of truth. No one is to say how far science will go and what it will lead to.