Psychoanalysis Paper on Cat's Cradle

Devin Long

Ms. Boeser

College Writing Period 2

25 January 2010

Cat’s Cradle: Object of Desire

Kurt Vonnegut displays a colloquial writing style, but underneath the simplistic surfaces of motives and character interaction exists available criticism. Why does Bokonon want to create a utopia? Why is Bokononism so important? Why does John want to write a book about Hiroshima? What is the motive for the creation of ice-nine? These questions pry deep into the motives of how the characters and Vonnegut himself perceive the world. Jacques Lacan, a famous psychoanalyst, believes that the grounded thought of “desire” deals with humans interacting through socially constructed fantasies and cultural ideology. In order for a social reality to continue, humans must have something to desire for the sake of desiring. Humans are afraid to actually capture what they say they want because they want to keep the object an impossibility (Felluga). Through this explanation, a Lacanian criticism of the novel explains how each character’s desire is flawed and brings implications that appear in the story. These come in the forms of John’s attempt to learn more about Hiroshima, utopianism from Bokonon, as well as militarism.
John’s attempt to create a book about Hiroshima is a form of an impossible desire and a project through social construction that is maintained until the end of the novel. While searching for a perfect story of Hiroshima, John attempts to learn as much raw information about it in order to create the story. This grasp of knowledge falls into a criticism of psychoanalysis through misrepresentation of “the Other”, or the unconscious part of the mind (Unconscious). John realizes throughout the novel that the fate of the world is constructed around Bokononism, San Lorenzo and ice-nine, the destructive substance Felix Hoenikker had created. John comes close into finding “the Other” through experience, rather than language. John and Mona come up a week after the ice-nine was released and he talks about how The Book of Knowledge answers basic questions for kids to explain science, but John feels that he knows more than the authors of that book now because he has seen the pain and destruction of the planet. He’s experienced it. John is now “the Other” to the current social system that we live in because nobody else can relate to his feeling of hopelessness and total decimation of planet Earth (Vonnegut 261). The last chapter proves how John incorporates his thought process into the novel because the reader learns that John’s book on Hiroshima is really Cat’s Cradle, and Vonnegut and John can be interpreted as the same person. By using this technique, Vonnegut disrupts the current social order because he doesn’t claim to know the impossible because he is “the Other.” This is true because the book that John wrote shares his experience of advanced warfare rather than simple data that other research books use. Therefore, John’s desire of the novel is viewed as a social fantasy until the end of the novel when we see the novel was John’s direct experience.
The source of Bokononism stems from a false desire of an attempt at creating a utopia. Bokonon first begins on a stranded island where he attempts to create the first utopia, but fails because his desire can never be fulfilled. This leads him to create Bokononism, where he starts a San Lorenzan religious movement that John eventually follows. This becomes problematic because Bokonon claims “Anyone who cannot understand how useful a religion based on lies can be will not understand this book either" (Vonnegut 80). Bokonon lives by a philosophy taught by a muscle builder who believed that muscles could be built by "pitting one set of muscles against another" (Vonnegut 102). In a similar fashion, Bokonon uses his holy reputation and outlawed religion in order to give the people of San Lorenzo desire to defeat the evil that McCabe perpetually demonstrates, albeit voluntarily. This further proves that the desire of living life as a Bokononist is a utopia structured by Bokonon because of his lies. Additionally, the attempt to live as a Bokononist means that the person is distanced farther away from Bokonon in psychoanalysis because he attempts to know “the Other” and become perfect through a construction of a religious utopia (Vonnegut). Yannis Stavrakakis, a Lacanian scholar, comments on the utopia saying, “Every utopian fantasy produces its reverse and calls for its elimination. Put another way, the beatific side of fantasy is coupled in utopian constructions with a horrific side, a paranoid need for a stigmatised scapegoat” (Stavrakakis). This is shown in the novel as rising tensions come between Bokononism and Christianity. This division is shown in the social interaction between the two religions in the scene with “Papa’s” rejection of Dr. Humana because he’s a "dirty Christian" while John and Hoenikker are true Bokononists (Vonnegut 218). The idea of the perfect utopia through Bokononism on the island of San Lorenzo creates massive violence and the end of the world. The means of destroying the world is caused by an air-show to destroy the "scapegoats of utopia" including Marx, Hitler, Mussolini and Moa. This releases the ice-nine for violent and negative purposes. This event demonstrates how the attempt at a utopia is used to scapegoat and exterminate anyone who is deemed imperfect, but the violent aggression may backfire as shown by the eventual demise of the human race in the novel.
Militarism and nuclear force is another driving motivator for the finding the object of desire in the story. Felix Hoenikker, the creator of the atomic bomb, works through the faulty social order because his desire of controlling the ice-nine is flawed and draws serious consequences. By creating the bomb, Felix Hoenikker’s reliance on only scientific data ties into the criticism of Lacan because it supports the social fantasies that Felix is subjected to because he doesn’t attempt to try and see the effects of the weapon, but rather scientifically calculate it using the current data he had. The “object petit a” as described by Lacan, or the object of desire never truly becomes realized by Felix because he doesn’t know it’s destructive tendencies (Felluga). He is blind to this type of knowledge as proven by the creation of the atomic bomb when another scientist said “Science has now known sin." Hoenikker replies, "what is sin?" (Vonnegut 17). Vonnegut’s mastery of the satirical humor of the arms race turns into another disruption of the social order because he eventually blows up the world, demonstrating the sins of science and the previously unconscious part of the mind that the ice-nine contained. Not only did Felix create the atomic bomb for the progression of science and warfare, but the idea of ice-nine was apparently rooted it a war general's question on how to rid the world of mud. Felix is able to create this advancement, and, byronically, he invents another way to destroy the world. Once again, his scientific genius has the capability to destroy the world. Ironically enough, the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki took approximately 100,000 civilians, yet it is estimated that 500,000 Americans would have been killed if the war had continued (Roizen). Although the numbers present a justifiable reason to deploy the bomb, it still displays the immoral decision of taking lives, when it was in the president's power to end the war peacefully.
Psychoanalysts such as Jaques Lacan believe that in order for a social order to continue, there must be a constant desire for something. Throughout Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle, each character demonstrates this desire. John begins the novel wishing to increase the public's knowledge of the atomic bomb and the day it was dropped. His desire brings him through ordeals in the novel and this desire is never completely achieved. Bokonon's desire for a utopian society is a wish that is never completely realized either. Finally, the militarism and the satire of militarism in the novel results in a final desire for characters such as Felix Hoenikker. Although Vonnegut's world view seems dismal, Cat's Cradle is a masterfully written novel that demonstrates Lacan's ideals seamlessly.

Works Cited

Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Lacan: On Desire." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. 13 June 2002. Purdue U. 25 January 2010.
Roizen, Brian. "Was the use of the atomic bomb moral?" Philosophy Paradise, 2006. Web. 26 January 2010.
Stavrakakis, Yannis. “Lacan and the Political” n.d. 25 January 2010.
"The Unconscious Mind." The Spiritual Nature of Life, n.d. Web. 26 January 2010.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat's Cradle. New York: The Dial Press, 1963. Print.