One of the essential characters in Cat's Cradle is Dr. Felix Hoenikker. Although he is actually dead for the entire course of the book he still plays an enormous role. First of all, he is one of the scientists responsible for the atom bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War Two. He had three kids, Angela, Frank, and Newt. In the process of writing his book about what happened on the day that the bomb was dropped, Jonah got in touch with Newt and discovered that while Dr. Hoenikker might have been an extraordinary scientist, but had no responsibility, which resulted in him being a bad father, and causing the end of the world.
The first person to talk about Dr. Hoenikker was Newt, his youngest son. When talking about his sister in a letter to Jonah, he said, "Angela was twenty-two then. She had been the real head of the family since she was sixteen, since Mother died, since I was born. She used to talk about how she had three children––me, Frank, and Father." (15) Vonnegut is showing how irresponsible Dr. Hoenikker was, by showing how much Angela had to step into the role of a parent. This means that Dr. Hoenikker wasn't there to support his children after their mother died, which is also shown by the fact that Newt calls him father instead of dad. Even though he was a great scientist, he couldn't step up for his own family, and let himself be taken care of by his daughter.
In his search for more information to put in his book, Jonah went to the lab where Dr. Hoenikker worked. When he met Dr. Asa Breed, who supervised Dr. Hoenikker, they talked about the way things worked at the lab, and Jonah asked, "'Do you mean...that nobody in this Laboratory is ever told what to work on? Nobody even suggests what they work on?' 'People suggest things all the time, but it isn't in the nature of a pure-research man to pay any attention to suggestions. His head is full of projects of his own, and that's the way we want it,'" (42). Dr. Breed's reply shows how little responsibility he put on Dr. Hoenikker and the other scientists. Because of the freedom that Dr. Breed gave him, Dr. Hoenikker unwittingly created something in his lab that would cause the end of the world. He was approached by someone from the United States Navy, about creating something that would get rid of all the mud that marines had to trudge through. Dr. Hoenikker told the general that such a feat wasn't possible. But, secretly, Dr. Hoenikker worked on this conundrum, and created a particle which he named ice-nine. Again, he was narrow-minded with his creation, because ice-nine turns every particle of water that it touches, into more ice-nine. This means the world would end, because lakes would freeze, then rivers would freeze, and oceans would freeze, and any human who drinks or ingests ice-nine would die from freezing to death.
Jonah was at a bar in Ilium, New York, and got to talking about the Hoenikker family, when the barman said, "That man, who's so famous for having a great mind, he pulled that girl out of high school in her sophomore year so he could go on having some woman take care of him," (71). This shows how narrow-minded and selfish Dr. Hoenikker is. He stole his daughter's education, and as a result her possible careers, because he wanted to someone to do what he wouldn't do. He wanted someone to take up the responsibility in his family. Vonnegut draws a contrast between how smart Dr. Hoenikker is, and how stupid he was in pulling his only daughter out of school, by having the barman say, "That man, who's so famous for having a great mind,".
Vonnegut uses Dr. Felix Hoenikker as an example of how destructive unbridled genius can be. Also, he used Dr. Hoenikker as a warning against letting a person become too irresponsible, by showing the result of his imagination, and the damage that it caused.
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