Postmodernism in The Cradle

In Postmodernism for Beginners, Lyotard describes modern life as "all the world's cultures, rituals, races, databanks, myths and musical motifs are intermixing like a smorgasbord in an earthquake." Lyotard says that postmodernists' goal is to take the individual groups, cultures, or as Kurt Vonnegut would say "granfaloons" and "represent" them. Postmodernists seem to take stock in the belief that there is no central truth to life and that there is beauty within the chaos of a thousand different lifestyles. They argue that holding a central "truth" will not lead to ultimate happiness, but instead possibly the destruction of humanity, as the idea that with progress will come perfection has lead to such inventions as the atom bomb which murdered thousands of innocent people or the meaning of life, in Cat's Cradle, "protein." Vonnegut argues that finding ultimate truth either leads to useless information (as evident by "protein's" existence) or destruction (ice-9). Vonnegut's novel is a postmodern piece as evident by the fact that it contradicts its own validity; from the start of the novel, Vonnegut conveys the idea that the book is a batch of "foma" (lies) and that the philosophies presented in the novel are only one of millions present in the world. Philosophies, like "Bokononism," are simply meant to give man something to think about, another way to distract himself from the mundanity of reality. Throughout Cat's Cradle, the narrator describes the portions of Bokononism that he finds so wonderful, as if by the end of the novel he plans to lead his reader to the inevitable beautiful way of life he has adopted thanks to Bokonomism. Yet the narrator ends up in no better a position by the end of the novel than he started. Worse, actually. Two of the people he is left with on the planet are disgustingly racist, self-centered and simply dumb, the love of his life kills herself (blaming it playfully on the narrator's slow behavior) and he actually meets Bokonon. Yet he believes Bokononism to be wonderful because it allows him to escape the gross reality into which he has been thrust by the idiocy of his "karass." The religion allows him not to take himself, his religion, or life seriously and cope with the nastiness of life by simply glorifying the creative, unorthodox thoughts the human mind can produce.