Cats Cradle as a Postmodern Text

       Cat's Cradle can be viewed as a Postmodern text with relative ease.  The structure of the book itself is antithetical to traditional Modern works in that it feature short, rather than lengthy, chapters.  The book is a criticism on society's goal of creating a perfect utopia and the belief that science and understanding will pave the way to this utopia.  Vonnegut writes the novel to show how society's quest to create a uniform utopia that believes in a common purpose is idiotic because there can be no one center of a society.  The grand narrative of a society is only partially true in any scenario because some people will reject the grand narrative and hold a different idea or thought as their own personal grand narrative.  Therefore, establishing a single grand narrative in society is futile.  Vonnegut expresses this point through the use of his characters.  Newt is a mdiget, while his siter is a giant, and together they have a radical brother-not exactly a stereotypical American family from the mid twentieth century.  In addition, Vonnegut uses Newt to display that society is filled with masked lies that conform to fit the grand narrative.  For example, after Newt describes how dishonest and unfaithful Anjelah's husband is, John (the narrartor) says, "From the way she talked, I thought it was a very happy marriage," and Newt promptly responds by saying, "See the cat?  See the cradle?"  Newt is implying that Anjelah is hiding her unhappiness in her marriage because she feels she must fit in to the grand narrative that says women should be maried to a handsome man and be happy with their lives from then on out until they die.  However, by referring to a cat's cradle, he is stating that it is just lies and misleadings designed to give the appearance of adherence to the grand narrative.  Vonnegut does this in order to show how all people do not fit in to the grand narrative, yet they force themselves to appear as if they fit in to the dominating cultural standards.  He argues that this is a fundamental problem in society, therefore advocating that grand narratives do more harm than good and people should not waste time trying to descover the one grand narrative that applies to all people in a society.