On the surface, Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five are very different literary works, each with their own creative style and plot. However, when the texts are examined with a careful eye, one can see multiple thematic undercurrents hidden in plain sight, such as the fate of war, time, and suffering. In Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five, strong anti-war sentiments are extremely common, showing all the ways in which "war is deleterious to the human condition." (Marvin) Vonnegut shows how war causes only unnecessary suffering and destroys the human body through countless ironic deaths, including that of Edgar Derby, who is shot for stealing a teapot shortly after hundreds of thousands of people were massacred in the Dresden bombings . Another example of an ironic death is when Billy Pilgrim and Ronald Weary join the two infantry scouts. Ironically, Pilgrim and Weary, who have no significant military training, are not killed, while the highly trained scouts are. Perhaps the greatest example of irony in Slaughterhouse Five is when the bird comments, "poo-tee-weet," after the firebombing. This is a senseless thing to say after such a massacre, but according to critics it proves that war and killing are senseless. (Marvin) Arguably as palpable as the severe physical toll the war took on Billy is the way it led to delirium and instability. for him. After the war Billy is relegated to a psychiatric hospital due to his reactionary mental state. Most likely, the cause of this madness is all the death he witnesses during the war. (Marvin) Unable to deal with all the suffering he witnesses, Billy slips into a very unstable state. Strangely, he discovers the Tralfamadorians, who incidentally believe that the report... half of the paper... ing. He is time-locked and randomly jumps from one point to another in his life. At one point he is kidnapped by Tranamlfadorain who can see into the 4th dimension and believe that you cannot control your life. Vonnegut, Kurt. The cat's cradle. New York: Dell Publishing, 1998. Print. Felix Honneker is the inventor of the atomic bomb. He also created ice nine which causes water to freeze at room temperature. A journalist who follows the fictional Bokonon religion travels to San Lorenzo to investigate Ice Nine. A dictator named Pope Morenzo rules with an iron fist. Then he discovers he has incurable cancer and kills himself with ice nine. His coffin falls into the ocean and all the water on earth freezes. Most people die. He escapes to a cave with Mona and writes his memoirs, which are the book itself. He then meets Bokinon and collects Bokonon's final cards.