Cat's Cradle

It was in the tombstone salesroom that I had my first vin-dit, a Bokononist word meaning a sudden, very personal shove in the direction of Bokononism, in the direction of believing that God Almighty knew all about me, after all, that God Almighty had some pretty elaborate plans for me.

The vin-dit had to do with the stone angel under the mistletoe. The cab driver had gotten it into his head that he had to have that angel for his mother's grave at any price. He was standing in front of it with tears in his eyes.

And here's the end.

“Where would you put the name on a thing like that?” asked the driver.

“There's already a name on it—on the pedestal.” We couldn't see the name, because of the boughs banked against the pedestal.

“It was never called for?” I wanted to know.

“It was never paid for. The way the story goes: this German immigrant was on his way West with his wife, and she died of smallpox here in Ilium. So he ordered this angel to be put up over her, and he showed my great-grandfather he had the cash to pay for it. But then he was robbed. Somebody took practically every cent he had. All he had left in this world was some land he'd bought in Indiana, land he'd never seen. So he moved on—said he'd be back later to pay for the angel.”

“But he never came back?” I asked.

“Nope.” Marvin Breed nudged some of the boughs aside with his toe so that we could see the raised letters on the pedestal. There was a last name written there. “There's a screwy name for you,” he said. “If that immigrant had any descendants, I expect they Americanized the name. They're probably Jones or Black or Thompson now.”

“There you're wrong,” I murmured.

The room seemed to tip, and its walls and ceiling and floor were transformed momentarily into the mouths of many tunnels—tunnels leading in all directions through time. I had a Bokononist vision of the unity in every second of all time and all wandering mankind, all wandering womankind, all wandering children.

“There you're wrong,” I said, when the vision was gone.

“You know some people by that name?”

“Yes.”

The name was my last name, too.

What's the narrator's last name? In my view, Vonnegut has just told us. The approach is funny and indirect, but still quite clear. But, when I went online to check my answer, I couldn't find anything. What does it mean? Is the answer more clear than I think, so that nobody bothers to talk about it? Is it less clear, so that nobody knows? Or am I just wrong? All the possibilities seem unlikely.

Anyway, here are the clues.

• It's a screwy name.
• It's a German name.
• The first of the proposed Americanized names is Jones.
• From the start of the book we know that the narrator's first name is John.
• Appropriately, the last sentence of the chapter is the main clue.

Although I didn't find the answer online, I did find a bit of circumstantial evidence. One of the places I looked was a Wikipedia article that I thought would be relevant. The article didn't mention Cat's Cradle, but it did refer to a similar article, and that article mentioned Slaughterhouse-Five. Strange! Here are links to the articles, but don't click on either one unless you're ready to see the answer.

Cat's Cradle	spoiler #1
Slaughterhouse-Five	spoiler #2

In spite of what Wikipedia says, I think of the name as all one word, but you can think what you like.