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Chapter 31
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Cat’s Cradle, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Science and Morality
Religion
Governance, Politics, and Nationhood
Absurdity and Meaninglessness
Summary
Analysis
Marvin Breed calls Dr. Hoenikker “a queer son of a bitch.” He explains that the large monument to Dr. Hoenikker’s wife was bought by the three Hoenikker children, after their father failed to put any marker on the grave. They bought it with Dr. Hoenikker’s Nobel Prize money. John calls it “dynamite money.”
Marvin’s account of Dr. Hoenikker reinforces the idea of him as not fully human, given that he did not wish to memorialize his wife’s existence.
Themes
John interjects from the present to say that, if he’d been a Bokononist at the time of this conversation, he might have whispered “busy, busy, busy” to himself. This is the Bokononist expression used when “we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.”
John is trying to figure out the puzzle of Dr. Hoenikker. As a Nobel winner, Dr. Hoenikker was a highly celebrated human being—yet he seems to have been so lacking in the very qualities that make people human.
Themes
