A beautifully cynical and philosophical satire. Vonnegut skewers both science and religion, and caps it off with the apocalypse. A fitting fiction for a time of pandemic.
Science
“Will this bother you as a scientist,” I inquired, “to go through a ritual like this?”
“I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything to make a human feel better, even if it’s unscientific.”
“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before,” Bokonon tells us. “He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”
“Pure research men work on what fascinates them, not on what fascinates other people.”
Religion
“Well, when it became evident that no governmental or economic reform was going to make the people much less miserable, the religion became the one real instrument of hope. Truth was the enemy of the people, because the truth was so terrible, so Bokonon made it his business to provide the people with better and better lies.”
“How did he become an outlaw?”
“It was his own idea. He asked McCabe to outlaw him and his religion, too, in order to give the religious life of the people more zest, more tang.”
Dark humor and colorful imagery
“What was that all about?” asked Castle.
“I haven’t got the slightest idea. Frank Hoenikker wants to see me right away.”
“Take your time. Relax. He’s a moron.”
“He said it was important.”
“How does he know what’s important? I could carve a better man out of a banana.”
“Well finish your story anyway.”
“Where was I?”
“The bubonic plague. The bulldozer was stalled by corpses.”
“The effect of the house was not so much to enclose as to announce that man had been whimsically busy there.”
“The pilot next to her, however, had his features composed in the catatonic, orgiastic rigidity of one receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor.”
“The whore, who said her name was Sandra, offered me delights unobtainable outside of the Palace Pigalle and Port Said. I said I wasn’t interested, and she was bright enough to say she wasn’t really interested either. As things turned out, we had both overestimated our apathies, but not by much.”
“Breed was a pink old man, very prosperous, beautifully dressed. His manner was civilized, optimistic, capable, serene. I, by contrast, felt bristly, diseased, cynical. I had spent the night with Sandra. My soul seemed as foul as smoke from burning cat fur.”
Government
“The form of government was anarchy save in limited situations wherein Castle Sugar wanted to own something or to get something done. In such situations the form of government was feudalism. The nobility was composed of Castle Sugar’s plantation bosses, who were heavily armed white men from the outside world. The knighthood was composed of big natives who, for small gifts and silly privileges, would kill or wound or torture on command. The spiritual needs of the people caught in this demoniacal squirrel cage were taken care of by a handful of butterball priests.”
Human Character
It was to be about Julian Castle, an American sugar millionaire who had, at the age of forty followed the example of Dr. Albert Schweitzer by founding a free hospital in a jungle, by devoting his life to miserable folk of another race.
[…]
When I flew to San Lorenzo, Julian Castle was sixty years old.
He had been absolutely unselfish for twenty years.
In his selfish days he had been as familiar to tabloid readers as Tommy Manville, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Barbara Hutton. His fame had rested on lechery, alcoholism, reckless driving, and draft evasion. He had had a dazzling talent for spending millions without increasing mankind’s stores of anything but chagrin.
“If you aren’t Papa’s doctor,” I said, “who is?”
“One of my staff, a Dr. Schlichter von Koenigswald.”
“A German?”
“Vaguely. He was in the S.S. for fourteen years. He was a camp physician at Auschwitz for six of those years.”
“Doing penance at the House of Hope and Mercy is he?”
“Yes,” said Castle, “and making great strides, too, saving lives right and left.”
“Good for him.”
“Yes. If he keeps going at this present rate, working night and day, the number of people he’s saved will equal the number of people he let die – in the year 3010.”
Close to home
I knew I wasn’t going to have an easy time writing a popular article about him. I was going to have to concentrate on his saintly deeds and ignore entirely the satanic things he thought and said.
Crosby was in his cups and had the drunkard’s illusion that he could speak frankly, provided he spoke affectionately.