 After turning down his original thesis in 1947, the University of Chicago awarded Vonnegut his master's degree in anthropology in 1971 for "Cat's Cradle".The first-person everyman narrator, a professional writer introducing himself as Jonah (but apparently named John), frames the plot as a flashback.Set in the mid-20th century, the plot revolves around a time when he was planning to write a book called "The Day the World Ended" about what important Americans did on the day of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.