To me, this quote is a metaphor for the entire island of San Lorenzo. From the outside looking in, it would see to be a pretty Caribbean get away for all to enjoy. But when you get there, you find a worthless hunk of rock where the only thing that keeps its locals happy is a religion that comments frequently on its lies. From the outside, Mona is the staple of human beauty but close up she is just another empty player in Bokonon's crazy play. To me, San Lorenzo feels like hell and Vonnegut's book is a twisted Dante's Divine Comedy. With every deeper step John takes into this circus of family called the Hoenikkers, he finds himself following them into there personal levels of hell and finally to the final level where the San Lorenzo acts as the Devil sitting in the middle of a literally hell frozen world. But instead of finding Purgatory, John takes a shortcut strait to Heaven, Mount McCabe. Though he doesn't actually climb it in the book, it ends with, "I I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who" (Vonnegut, 287). John has had a front seat to a family that has single handedly destroyed the world and his smile on the mountain is his way of saying, "Look at all I've seen".
My questions are:
- Why did Vonnegut choose to write about the apolcolyspe?
- Is the Hoenikker supposed to represent the human race as a whole?
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