Cat's Cradle Chapter 43 Summary

The Demonstrator

• Mr. Crosby shares with John his opinion that dictatorships are good things.
• So you don't get the wrong idea, John tells the reader that Crosby "wasn't a terrible person [or] a fool." He just "confront[s] the world with a certain barn-yard clownishness" (43.1) and believes that many of the people on Earth were put there to build him some bicycles.
• Crosby asks John if he knows how they deal with crime in San Lorenzo. John says he doesn't, and you know what that means. Time for an explanation!
• San Lorenzo has a thing called the hook, which is like a hook. But for people. Any and all crimes are punished by hook. It's that simple.
• Crosby doesn't think it's good, but he doesn't think it's bad either. He does off-handedly wonder what such a punishment would do to clear up juvenile delinquency.
• Hazel mentions they saw something similar to the hook at the waxworks museum in London. It was next to an exhibit of a wax man being roasted alive on an iron chair.
• The man in the iron chair turned out to be innocent.