On The Reconstructive Artistry In Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut is a famous postmodernist writer in the history of American literature and he established his fame and status after the publication of the novel Slaughterhouse-Five which has been accepted extensive attention from both domestic and overseas researchers.Yet his other works still await more comprehensive and systematic assessment.Therefore,this thesis will make a technical analysis of one of his masterpieces -Cat's Cradle.The thesis,based on the fact that Vonnegut is a typical postmodern novelist,mainly approaches the reconstructive artistry exhibited in the novel in the hope of contributing some new insights to the ongoing Vonnegut criticism.The introduction part briefly talks about postmodernism and postmodernist writers,and introduces Vonnegut's life,major works and his writing style.Cat's Cradle is a representative of his postmodernist works.In this novel,Vonnegut relates the hypocrisy of science,religion and politics by using some literary devices that are typical in the postmodernist novels as fiction,collage,irony,parody,etc.Chapterâ… mainly deals with "fiction".In the novel,Vonnegut carefully invents a fictive Caribbean island,San Lorenzo,on which we see that the fiction takes the form of a religion,namely,Bokononism,an elaborate system of self-confessed lies.The invented ice-nine results in the coming of the doomsday and the humanistic dissimilationChapterâ…¡is about "collage",which is one of the important creative artistic features and is mainly used in language to reveal the absurdity.It is also used to combine different literary genres to increase the interest of the novel.Chapterâ…¢analyzes "irony".It is employed by Vonnegut to satirize the fraudulence of the religion and the hypocrisy of politics.Chapterâ…£discusses "parody".Like many other postmodernist novelists, Vonnegut also uses this technique to reveal the falsity of reality,which only exists in the language that depicts it.The conclusion part makes a summary of the thesis.Vonnegut and his works have greatly influenced his contemporaries.His works are well worth reading and studying.And Cat's Cradle is in the real sense his first postmodernist novel which has a high value for investigating the postmodernism.