Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle is considered a postmodern text in that it exemplifies many displays of anti-form or more specifically, anti-art. According to Jim Powell in Postmodernism for Beginners, “Postmodernists often create, compose, or paint entirely by chance--- spilling or throwing paint on canvasses, randomly determining the pitch and duration of musical notes in a melody, seeking to de-define art--- to create non-art or anti-art” (18). Postmodernists try to see the world as it is for what it is in the present, reflecting on the complexity and diversity of life. They express what they see and feel into this form of non-art, finding new ways that could represent life in it’s wholly matter.
For example, in finding Newt, Jonah comes upon Newt’s painting, all “small and black and warty… consist[ing] of scratches made in… black… [and] framed in a misty view of the sky, sea, and valley” (Vonnegut 164). Such an empty and solid color came to life in the hands of Newton. Particularly, the color of black against the view is something to take note of; however, in comparing it to the world, the picture seems to reflect the emptiness of the world, despite all the happiness we see. Like the random strokes of black, life is shown to be just as haphazard in its truth. In addition, when Angela played her clarinet, she “went from liquid lyricism to rasping lechery to the shrill skittishness of a frightened child, to a heroin nightmare” (Vonnegut 182). Her music flowed right through her soul and poured over into life. Although her music played in tuned to another, her form of art went against whatever was there originally and was blasted into the formation of a more perplexed emotion, plainly showing her lack of happiness in the world. Further more, even the house where Jonah resided displayed an amount of postmodernism, having an effect that “was not so much to enclose as to announce that a man had been whimsically busy there” (Vonnegut 163).
well, that's all i have time for; sorry it was mostly all CD and not enough analysis to back it up. time has ran out.
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