"When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed." (156).
When Kurt Vonnegut wrote these lines in his novel Cat's Cradle , through the narration of John as a writer, he, in deed, expressed his own aim in writing this novel. As a postmodernist writer, by using innovative techniques in Cat's Cradle, he intends to reach modern reader, in order to help them in the turbulent times of the post-second World War years. Describing the modern world as a technological, political and spritual wasteland in his novel, Vonnegut tries to find solution to this chaos of the world and modern man, who is weak, purposeless and feels alienated from his society. In this respect, with the advantages of postmodernism, in other words with absolute freedom to create, in Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut portraits the turbulent society of the post-II.W.W.
Kurt Vonnegut speaking at Case Western Reserve Uni...
Cat's Cradle
Vonnegut Wooden NickelAmerica in a humourous way in contrast to its context; and he uses innovative technique, in which his forming of language, narration, humor, parody and fantasy are idiosyncratic.
Vonnegut's using of language in Cat's Cradle is the most important determinant of his innovative technique. He uses simple and direct statements, and basic daily language rather than complex and symbolic ones, within an awareness of it would be bored people, who had already felt themselves purposeless, and who had been careless about their lives. For instance; the sentences of H. Lowe Crosby's speech about the usage of hook in the judgement of the criminals are short and simple that one can easily understand his opinion, and his tendency to dictatorship rather than democracy. He said that;
"I don't say it's good, but I don't say it is bad either. I sometimes wonder if something like that wouldn't clear...