Ken's post on Vonnegut's female characters

Mona and Angela: Vonnegut's women have it rough.

So, I guess this is where I ramble for a bit, and you all listen in. Alrighty.

Angela is described as a rather pitiable character. We're asked to be sympathetic to her by Newt, but, as Lynn said last week, you wouldn't want to be her. We understand why, but she's still an unpleasant character.

Mona hasn't actually made much of an appearance, except in the distance, where we don't get to know her all that well, but I think it's safe to say from Julian Castle's index that she's had a bit of a rough time of it. I think it's pretty obvious that being seen as a sex object by the people of San Lorenzo has been kinda hard on her, though Bokononism seems to give her a way of dealing with it. My initial reaction is that this is Vonnegut's way of criticizing Western society's tendency to objectify women. However, I believe that Vonnegut consumed quite a bit of porn himself, and as far as I know was never really apologetic or guilty about it. Scratch that one.

Still, it could be that the treatment Vonnegut's female characters receive is his way of commenting on the ways that our society can be hard on women. I haven't got numbers to back it up - though I think you do, Leah? lend me a hand here, if you've got it - but I want to say that since Vonnegut started writing, our culture has come a way in that area.
I had an engineering professor - Herrelko - who was wonderfully adamant that his department suffered because women were told that they couldn?t do well in math and science. By the time they got to college, his thinking went, there weren't nearly as many of them entering engineering. So, perhaps we've a ways to go, but Herrelko's opinion seemed to be the consensus among the rest of the profs over in KL. That looks like progress to me, I guess.

(Go-Go Gadget Armchair and Chianti) Look Ma! I'm a living-room anthropologist! And it is now Ohbvious to me, that ow-ah S'ciety was quite hahrd on puhrsuns of the Fee-male p'suasion, during the Time when ow-ah Be-loved Vonnegut fohrmed his opinions on th' subject. And Good Riddance!

How much should we take Jonah seriously?

Reading through Cat's Cradle this time, what strikes me is Vonnegut's constant irony or sarcasm. Almost nothing in the book is meant to be accepted as written; he almost always means the opposite of what he says.

For example, Sandra in Ilium remembers Dr. Breed's commencement address, where he says people need to study science more to remove "all the trouble" in the world. Of course, he was supervising the creation of the atomic bomb at the time, so Vonnegut couldn't possibly be serious about this. The narrator even says Sandra was being serious and didn't see the humor in it.

When Jonah actually meets Dr. Breed, he describes an old serial killer who had 26 people "on his conscience." Once again, Breed and certainly the dead Dr. Hoenikker should have tens of thousands of people on their conscience, but Vonnegut leaves that to the reader to keep in mind. The narrator himself barely even indicates that he knows that sarcasm is going on.

This is in contrast to the rare points where Vonnegut and the narrator are actually honest and serious--for example, when the Girl Pool sings for Dr. Breed, or when Jonah relates the ideas of Bokononism. My question is, how is the reader supposed to differentiate between the ironic statements and the serious? What is the difference between "God really is love, you know" from Miss Faust and "Around and around and around we spin, / With feet of lead and wings of tin" from Bokonon?

Hello, welcome.

Please comment on others' posts with your own opinions and observations.

You can expect my first post soon.

Thanks.

Steve