The Danger of Innocence

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle, I like the character Dr. Felix Hoenikker the least, due to his blatant indifference.  A recurrent pattern appears with Felix throughout the early chapters: even though he never intentionally tries to harm those around him, Felix somehow manages to.    The reason for this seemingly accidental destruction stems from his infantile aloofness.  Caught up in the whimsy of scientific discovery, Felix did not pay a dime of attention to his children, or even the inhabitants of the globe for that matter.  Ordered by a military general to solve the problem of profuse mud on war battlegrounds, Felix inadvertently creates a compound that could”’end of the world’’’ if released into a source of liquid (50).  Vonnegut portrays Felix as the epitome of a researcher who looks for complex answers, but does not consider the implications of his successes outside of the laboratory.  Like a child playing with toys—precarious toys, Felix obsesses over gadgetry and technology, and takes not a care for his surroundings.  As salesman Marvin Breed summarized, there does not exist a man “less interested in the living” than Felix (68). Vonnegut constructs logos by making the claim that scientists tend to remove themselves from personal relationships in order to better dedicate their time to their rigorous profession.  Unfortunately for the human race in Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut takes this generalization to the extreme in Felix.  The father of the atomic bomb does not exhibit moral obligations or accountability whatsoever.  For instance, because of his inability to think lucidly about every-day menial tasks, he carelessly left his vehicle in the middle of a traffic intersection, which consequently led to the infliction of a mortal wound on his wife when she went to drive the immobile car out of harm’s way.  Felix “was [the reason] why she died” (31).  Felix’s reaction?   He kept tinkering away at his projects, his attitude unaffected by the loss.  Felix helped to decimate thousands of people by his working on the atomic bomb, and emotionally scarred millions more, his family included.  And yet, no mal-intent originates from Felix, and that very fact frustrates me most.  The innocence Felix maintained, compounded with the mass weaponry he produced, serves as a mind-numbing oxymoron.  Without the tools of empathy and commiseration, Felix evolved into an entity more mechanical than human.  I find it hard to like a character that has acquiesced his soul and personality to the field of science.