To send off our discussion of Cat’s Cradle, I thought I’d open up discussion on something that was very interesting in class. The idea of other, perhaps smaller, nations forming relationships with America based on their economic power is something that makes itself present in the novel (H. Lowe Crosby as a figure of American industrial capitalism and his interest in San Lorenzo and Vice Versa). This can correspond to many other nations relationships to America as an economic Superpower. Canada, in particular, seems to have a similar relationship with the US, though not to the same extent. However, in this period of economic turmoil for our faltering economic juggernaut southern nation, is this relationship changing?
In another sense, perhaps we could view the current predicament that the US is in right now as a form of “economic ice nine”. In some respects it is. The financial crisis took shape in a similar fashion as Vonnegut’s satirical device. Instead of a physical “chip” of ice nine, however, what is transmitted is the fatal idealized way of thinking that makes debt a necessary part of American life. In a sense, this idea is what inevitably brought America to its knees, there was no money left and huge banks like Lehman brothers were literally frozen; they could not continue to operate. If someone would like to expand on this issue or tell me a am completely off base with this interpretation, feel free.
Tony