Cat’s Cradle

1. Cat’s Cradle Chapters 1-27: Meow. Meow.

2. Journal 1 “‘Ladies and Gentlemen. I stand before you now because I never stopped dawdling like an eight-year-old on a spring morning on his way to school. Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn. I am a very happy man. Thank you’” (11).

3. Making a Cat’s Cradle “He all of a sudden came out of his study and did something he’d never done before. He tried to play with me… ‘See? See? See?’ he asked. ‘Cat’s cradle. See the cat’s cradle? See where the nice pussycat sleeps? Meow. Meow’” (11-12). Now it is our turn to give it a try.

4. Joining the Karass “‘If you find your life tangled up with somebody else’s life for no very logical reasons’ writes Bokonon, ‘that person may be a member of your karass’…[K]arass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries” (2-3). • How does John’s book work as the wampeter for his karass?

5. Divine Action “She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is Doing, [writes Bokonon]” (5). • How does this fit with the foma of Bokononism?

6. Science vs. Religion “After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, ‘Science has now known sin.’ And do you know what Father said? He said, ‘What is sin?’” (17). • What does Felix Hoenikker’s question tell us about his character?

7. Due Process “We talked about the nice poor people who went to the electric chair; and we talked about the rich bastards who didn’t’” (22). • Is this relevant in the modern United States?

8. Value “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become” (41). • How does this idea set our characters apart?

9. Ice-Nine “Suppose that the sort of ice we skate upon and put into highballs—what we might call ice-one—is only one of several types of ice. Suppose water always froze as ice-oneon Earth because it had never had a seed to form…ice-nine—a crystal as hard as this desk—with a melting point of…one-hundred degrees Fahrenheit” (46). “‘When it fell, it would freeze into hard little hobnails of ice-nine—and that would be the end of the world!’” (50). “Ice-nine was the last gift Felix Hoenikker created for mankind before going to his just reward” (50).

10. For the Children “What was to become of those three chips was, I am convinced, a principal concern of my karass” (53). • How does the narrative start to change once John knows Ice-nine exists? • Does his book take a backseat to this new knowledge?

11. Cat’s Cradle Caricatures • Apicture, description, or imitation of a person or thing in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect • Pick one of the main characters from the first 27 chapters and create one of your own • The Hoenikkers would work nicely

12. The Words of Bokonon • Foma (frontispiece) – harmless untruths • Karass (2) – teams that do God’s will without ever discovering what they are doing • Kan-kan (2) – the instrument that brings one into a karass • Sinookas (6) – the tendrils of life • Wampeter (52) – the pivot of the karass (what it revolves around) • Each karass has two – one waxing, one waning