[Almost] all the commentators on Vonnegut betray a certain uneasiness in talking about him as a satirist; he does not quite fit the mold. (p. 101)

Vonnegut's basic world view is Post-existential. He [rejects] all ethical absolutes. Vonnegut stresses the futility of man's search for meaning in a world where everything is "a nightmare of meaninglessness without end," where we are all the victims of a series of accidents, "trapped in the amber of this moment…. Because this moment simply is." In Cat's Cradle he shows how man's "nostalgia for unity," to use Camus' phrase, forces him to interpret mere chance as purposeful, leads him to create the meaning he wants to find and makes him believe in his own insubstantial structure, his own cat's cradle. Each of Vonnegut's novels shows us that there is no relation between human actions and the events that take place in human lives...