Cat's Cradle has little to offer but Kurt Vonnegut's very pessimistic assessment of religion, politics, and love. The characters are just "types," and so incompletely sketched that we can't care what happens to any of them. The plot brings together an assortment of these characters - for no apparent reason at all - to an island for a doomsday scenario. After the scenario plays out, we receive from Vonnegut the valuable intelligence that all of mankind's effort is meaningless and absurd, and that the best we can hope for is a good laugh at the joke that God has played on us. Most readers will have no reason to trouble with this inconsequential work.