Where's the Cat, Where's the Cradle?

I rarely read novels, but I've figured out that I like novels of disillusionment (particularly post-Great War and post-World War II), where the individual is pitted against increasingly hollow social structures and must find a separate peace or meaning for existence. Sarcasm and sardonic humor along the way get extra points.

I finished Cat's Cradle last night. (I vaguely remember reading it in high school, but I don't think it was for a class.) Its wacky plot includes a midget, the A-bomb, a dictator on a Caribbean island, a forbidden religion, a beautiful woman, and a secret scientific weapon that can destroy humankind. I loved it! The chapters were short little 1-to-3 page vignettes, too, so it was perfect for my little attention span.

Vonnegut's portrayal of the intersections of religion, nationalism, and capitalism were both brilliant and hilarious. I don't think Cat's Cradle is so much an existential statement (though existentialism certainly grew out of post-nuclear cynicism) as a critique of power and language: religions (through the metaphor of the made-up Bokonism) are founded upon lies, figures that are supposed to command authority and respect lack empathy, conversations between characters present false images. Science, in the form of a made-up compound that can end the world, is presented as undeniable truth and reality, but only when and because it is stripped of human notions like faith, hope, and love. Everything is an illusion. There are no answers to the questions that conflicting messages raise.

Then again, I'm seeing everything as a critique of power, icons, and semantics these days.