Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, though of more tragic beginnings, wrote black comedies, of which Still Life clearly is not one; in Cat's Cradle, in which Vonnegut exhibits one of many references to his fear of technology (1), we find ice-nine, a material which allows water to freeze at room temperature and eventually freezes the world into oblivion. Taken as it is, ice-nine can be said to portray Vonnegut's fear of technology and the propensity of even simple advances to perpetrate horrors upon the world, much in the same way we find Robbins courting the idea of simple advances in human pattern. As the omnipotent narrator, and not the intermittent typist, we often find Robbins going far in depth about the Outlaw College; Outlaw C. holds a strong belief that even the most seemingly insignificant “advances” in human pattern can escalate into global disintegration of love, prosperity, and, of course, human pattern (2). The advances he speaks of are things such as the movement toward peaceful and honestly democratic governing. This movement, much like ice-nine, is something there is a strong belief should be birthed, and also, a thing which the reality of human pattern dictates will likely never exist. More literally like ice-nine, we find Robbins discussing the Hawaiian mongoose syndrome again and again, an advanced-human method the Hawaiian island people used to rid the island of so many rats, but, as advances in human pattern are wont to do, this advance over natural ecology ended poorly; the mongooses did get rid of the rats, along with “chickens, pigs, birds, cats, dogs, and small children,” (Robbins, Still Life, 29) (3). Some would argue that human pattern is, and has ever-been, to take control of its surroundings, and they would be right. However, ice-nine and the mongooses share another similarity here, the immediate surroundings of neither human group warranted the solution of either ice-nine or mongooses.

1 I say "fear," I mean "phobia"
2 The last of which, unfortunately, seems to hold the greatest measure
3 You read that right, mongooses eat kids, too