According to the ancient Greeks, the world began in chaos. If so, then we have now come full circle.
Certainly the human position has become unenviable, to say the least. Our species has catapulted itself headlong into a massive global catastrophe - one that threatens us all, physically, spiritually and sociologically - a catastrophe that can only be averted at the expense of the present social order.
Then again, is that such a great loss?
After all, how do we apologize for a system that has allowed the development of technology capable of ending all life on earth in an instant? How do we apologize for the creation of Science, an omnipresent, hellish, impersonal worldview, a religion with much dogma but no spirituality? How do we apologize for a system that rewards the greedy and slights the compassionate, concentrating massive stores of wealth and power in the hands of a complacent few? How do we apologize for the rampant inequalities between the sexes and the races that still persist, here as everywhere?
In every aspect of life - social, cultural, economic, religious, political, environmental - our social order has proved a miserable failure. Yet we are too lazy, too stupid, too selfish, too irresponsible and too self-satisfied to change a thing. Nay - we are too dull-witted to envision the possibility of anything being better.
Under such circumstances, the hopes for a meaningful change, a meaningful improvement, in human society are slim indeed. The forces of inertia are too strong and too well organized.
Against such a setting Kurt Vonnegut weaves his tales. As in any book, conflict drives the story on. For Vonnegut that conflict is between what is meaningful and good, and what is destructive, demoralizing, and unkind. Humans by their nature are basically good, but wherever they go destructiveness is endemic. That destructiveness requires only the slightest provocation to become epidemic. The accumulation of decay, rather than its original prevalence, is what eventually will bring about our downfall.
There is a third force that is evident in all of Vonnegut's books, but which, interestingly, is not a prime mover of the plot in any of them. That third force is beauty, richness, depth. Despairing that goodness will ever truly triumph, it is to this third force that Vonnegut turns for comfort in a hellish world. From this third force comes his sense of humour, his oratorical artistry, and his fascination with the complexity and uniqueness of his own characters. Seen as such, the faults and imperfections of his characters do not detract from their wholesomeness, but rather enhance it by adding a further level of depth to their personalities.
What makes Vonnegut truly dynamic, however, is not his great cosmic conflicts or his humour or his delight in the uniqueness of his minor characters. His narrators hold the story together and propel it ever forward. The narrator of Cat's Cradle, whom we are invited to call Jonah, provides a focus for the karass-doctrine that lies at the essence of Cat's Cradle's plot. This doctrine states that humankind is divided into "teams" or karasses, each doing the work of the Almighty in its own way, without even realizing what they are doing. The doctrine provides the plot with its inner motion, thus orchestrating the theme; meanwhile, virtually all of the characters in the book are also in Jonah's karass. The narrator of Galápagos speaks from the unique perspective of a ghost sentenced to wander the earth for a million years, allowing him to relate the plot from its inception to its miraculous consummation a million years later. As a ghost, he can read people's minds, and as a result we have a richness of character development. By the time he wrote Hocus Pocus, Vonnegut had mastered the approach of having his narrators "confess" the plot in their old age. In this way the perceptions, aspirations, and fears of the narrator take on a pivotal rôle, for the great conflict central to both plot and theme exists only as the narrator perceives it.
The importance of the narrators, and indeed of all his characters, allows Vonnegut to attack the failings and weaknesses of modern society from an eminently human perspective. He stands as a critic of society, not as a hate-monger. A message that is essentially human - that people should strive to maintain what is best within themselves, to "live by the foma (harmless untruths) that make [them] brave and kind and healthy and happy", as it was phrased in the dedication to Cat's Cradle - requires an essentially human messenger. And ultimately Vonnegut is a humanist, far more than he is a pessimist, a satirist, or a cynic.
As we have seen, Vonnegut's novels are all driven by a single great conflict, which ultimately equates to the conflict between humanity and inhumanity. That conflict is the essence of his themes, the driving force behind his plots, the genius of his characters, and the inspiration for his style. In Cat's Cradle science is the agent of inhumanity, teaching as it does a harsh impartiality that leaves no room for sympathy or charity; in Galápagos, the villain is the human brain, which interferes with the conscience and good workings of the soul; and in Hocus Pocus, intolerance itself, manifested in persecution, bigotry and warfare, is the bringer of the horrors of inhumanity. Vonnegut will defend humanity against these and any other threats to its integrity, for in the end his presiding genius is a deep and heartfelt humanism, which makes itself known, first, in the fascination he has with his own characters, and second in the intensely human message of his theme.
First, as a student of human nature (like Leon in Galápagos, one might say), Vonnegut delights in the richness and beauty of diverse human life. For him, every character has a story to tell, and every story is as significant and engaging as that of even the most central figure of the plot. Never mind their individual traits, his minor characters come from a rich panoply of races, nations, ages and sexes that is amazing in itself: in only the three books we have here considered, we find Americans, white and black; Japanese, including the rich, urbane Hiroguchis from Tokyo and poor country boys from Hokkaido; Ecuadorians and Peruvians, both white and red; Germans, Finns, Belgians…. The list is end-less. And each of those characters is as real and complex a person to Vonnegut as you or me; indeed, Vonnegut devotes much of his time to chronicling each of his minor characters' life stories, and I get the impression there is much more to them than what he ever tells us in the books. A common thread in Vonnegut's character development is the relationship between imperfection and beauty; for Vonnegut asserts that though imperfection is bewailably universal to his characters, nevertheless it enhances their richness, their depth, to such degree that in all honesty we could not wish it gone.
For one character archetype, it must be said, that is not the case; there is one character archetype whose faults make him the antithesis of all that is good and in keeping with Vonnegut's ethos of humanness. This is the father figure, as represented, in our three books, by Felix Hoenikker in Cat's Cradle, Kilgore Trout in Galápagos, and Gene Hartke's father in Hocus Pocus. All these people are basically decent souls, you might say; they never knowingly lied to their children, or used physical violence with them, or deliberately tried to harm them emotionally or spiritually. Yet unconsciously, unwittingly, they starved their families of love and understanding, letting themselves neglect their duties to be kind and caring people: for this Vonnegut abhors them. The Vonnegut father figure is, for him, the embodiment of unconcerned, unwitting cruelty, of allowing oneself to fail to love.
For the rest of his life, because of this, Vonnegut was to associate such cruelty with laxness, with letting oneself go. And this is interesting; for Vonnegut was a soldier (having done a brief stint in World War II), and throughout his life - despite the relatively low esteem in which he held the armed forces - he was to associate responsibility, and hence responsibility for others, with self-discipline. With the idea fixed in his head that self-discipline paves the way for love and compassion, while irresponsibility breeds only destruction and misery, the essence of his themes was in place. We must, he asserts, make a conscious decision to love, or else the lethargy of indiscipline will shut out all emotion from us, and we shall be lost to the world.
This leads me into my second point about Vonnegut's humanism, namely the deeply human message of his themes. It is no coincidence that the antithesis of virtue is for him represented by one so near and dear to him as his own father. We are to interpret his books, great cosmic conflicts in plot and theme notwithstanding, in a more practical, earthly way: as a sign that we should not be afraid to love, to embrace one another and the glories and imperfections of our souls. There is, I think, no better illustration of my point than Bokononism in Cat's Cradle, which espoused a whole worldview, a whole new way of looking at how life and God and people fit in, namely the karass-doctrine, simply to get the message across that people should be kind and caring to one another. For Vonnegut's cynicism about the fate of the world or of humankind does not extend to individual people themselves; he decries our species but loves its members.
Though vocal in his criticism of society's madness, Vonnegut actually offers no solutions. It is as if, believing that good can never truly triumph, Vonnegut reaches the conclusion that all a responsible person can do in this day and age is vouch for him- or herself, and try, individually, humbly, to be kind and happy and brave.
Beyond this Vonnegut offers no hope for humankind.