A Study Of Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle From The Deconstructionist Perspective

Kurt Vonnegut(1922—2007)had a great influence on the American youths in the mid-to-late 20 th century.His works enjoyed popularity among the American youths for their grotesque narratives and strong postmodern writing style,exerting far-reaching influence on postmodern literature.Cat's Cradle,according to Peter J.Reed,an expert in Vonnegut studies,is considered as the first postmodern work in the real sense with obvious postmodern thought of “deconstruction”.Deconstruction disintegrates the metaphysical thought that has ruled the West for thousands of years by subverting the hierarchical binary oppositions and dispelling the original meaning,thus affirming the uncertainty feature in things.The novel Cat's Cradle shows the obvious characteristics of deconstruction in terms of contradictory character images,subverting the hierarchy and established social concepts in America and disintegrating meaning.This thesis consists of three parts to discuss Vonnegut's deconstructive spirit: the introduction,four chapters and the conclusion.The part of Introduction firstly gives an overview of Kurt Vonnegut and the creation background of Cat's Cradle,the literature review on this novel at home and abroad,and then proceeds to point out the significance of the topic selection and academic study.Chapter One is the theoretical framework,introducing the notion of deconstruction from three aspects: the feature of uncertainty,subversion of hierarchical binary oppositions,and disintegration of meaning.At the same time,it points out the concrete manifestation of them in Cat's Cradle.Chapter Two analyzes the specific manifestation of uncertainty in the novel through the uncertainty of the characters' images.The images of characters in the novel are not so bright and definite.Instead,they present contradictory features,which makes it difficult for readers to make affirmative judgments.The protagonist “Jonah” becomes a figure dangling between the image of savior and that of a destroyer.Dr.Hoenikker and his three children are the victims of America's excessive technocracy and the executioners of the world destruction.Chapter Three probes into the phenomenon of subversion of the hierarchical binary oppositions.Vonnegut blurs the distinction between the established norms—the elites and the ordinary,civilization and fatuity,enabling the logos discourse in the traditional society to lose its voice,depriving the readers of the value reference and standard,and thus endowing the value judgment with the feature of uncertainty.Chapter Four studies how Vonnegut disintegrates “meaning”.He disintegrates the fixed meanings of the religion,life and text,which enables these norms to put on the feature of uncertainty.The last part is the Conclusion,which first of all summarizes the whole thesis,and then points out that Vonnegut,by means of uncertainty in Cat's Cradle,exposes the broken American dream,the destruction crisis of the real world,and what's more,his hope to rebuild a new world order.