Cat's Cradle Religion

1453 Words3 Pages

Written in the midst of America’s Peace Movement, a time where individuals grew more free-spirited and strayed from traditional religious practices following years of depression and war, Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle illuminates the absurdity of religion. He achieves this theme by implementing the principles of Bokononism. Bokononism is a fictional religion, and Vonnegut uses its irrationality to demonstrate how religion exists because of the human tendency to be comforted by fabricated beliefs. Bokonon, the founder of Bokononism, openly acknowledges that the religion’s teachings are based on comforting lies, or “foma”. He believes that, “truth was the enemy of the people, because the truth was so terrible, so [he] made it his business to provide …show more content…

Let us start our Republic with a chain of drug stores, a chain of grocery stores, a chain of gas chambers, and a national game” (Vonnegut 285). By including “gas chambers” and “a national game” in Bokonon’s vision of an ideal society, Vonnegut uses dark humor to underscore the idea that religion is often associated with unrealistic and demented qualities. With this idea, Vonnegut successfully critiques religion. In the context of Cat’s Cradle, perspectives on religion changed as more people lost faith in ancient beliefs such as Christianity, Catholicism, and Judaism. According to an article written to reveal the decline of religiosity over the past century in America, Tobin Grant explains that “during the post-war, baby-booming 1950s, there was a revival of religion. then came the societal changes of the 1960s, which included a questioning of religious institutions,” he continues, “there was a resulting decline in religion” (Grant). This decline has been continuous due to the fact that people increasingly believe that religion is absurd because there are still religious groups in the modern world that resemble the insanities of

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