Bokononism
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Bokononism is the fictional religion practiced by many of the characters in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle.
It is based on living by the untruths that make one happy, called foma. Many of the sacred texts of Bokononism were written in the form of calypsos.
Bokonon is the founder of the religion. He was born Lionel Boyd Johnson. "Bokonon" was the way the natives of San Lorenzo, the fictional Caribbean island where the shipwrecked Johnson started his religion, pronounced his family name.
Bokonon has also been quoted in Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins.
Bokonon is also a Brigadier Saint of the POEE.
Bokononism is also referenced in Whirligig by Paul Fleischman.
[edit] Sayings of Bokonon
- "All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies."
- "Busy, busy, busy."
- "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."
I wanted all things
To seem to make some sense,
So we all could be happy, yes,
Instead of tense.
And I made up lies
So that they all fit nice,
And I made this sad world
A Par-a-dise.
Oh, a lion hunter in the jungle dark,
and a sleeping drunkard up in Central Park,
and a Chinese dentist and a British queen,
all fit together in the same machine.
Nice, nice, very nice,
nice, nice, very nice,
nice, nice, very nice
such very different people in the same device.
The preceding lyrics were set to music by the band Ambrosia in 1975, in their hit song "Nice, Nice, Very Nice."
[edit] Vocabulary
Vonnegut created various concepts, and intentionally "silly" words to describe them, in order to outline the Bokonist faith as a background for his story.
- boko-maru
- A union of two souls achieved by placing the soles of two people's feet together. It is a Bokononist ritual that is taboo and forbidden on the island of San Lorenzo, referred to as "footplay".
- Borasisi
- The sun.
- Pabu
- The moon.
- duprass
- A karass made of two persons. "A true duprass can't be invaded, not even by children born of such a union." Members of a duprass die within one week of each other, as shown in the book Cat's Cradle.
- foma
- "Harmless lies" (e.g., "Prosperity is just around the corner"). Bokonon describes his own religion as foma, created for the purpose of bringing comfort to the people of Bokonon's island. The people of San Lorenzo live under a poverty-stricken Third World dictatorship, but thanks to the comforting untruths of Bokonon's foma, they are better equipped to face reality (following Vonnegut's early theories about the true usefulness of religion).
- granfalloon
- A false karass. People who identify themselves by state or country of origin or in other various ways to form a group. There is much granfalloonery in the world. To quote the book, "If you wish to study a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon."
- kan-kan
- The instrument which brings you to your karass.
- karass
- A group of people who, unbeknownst to them, are collectively doing God's will in carrying out a specific, common, task. A karass is driven forward in time and space by tension within the karass.
- sin-wat
- A person who wants all of somebody's love. Bokononists believe love should be freely shared.
- vin-dit
- The force that first pushes a person in the direction of accepting Bokononism
- wampeter
- An object which is the focus of a karass; that is, the lives of many otherwise unrelated people are centered on a wampeter (e.g., a piece of ice-nine in Cat's Cradle). A karass will always have exactly two wampeters: one waxing, one waning. The term first appears on p. 52 of Cat's Cradle (in the 1998 printing by Dell Publishing). It is analogous to a MacGuffin.
- wrang-wrang
- "A person who steers people away from a line of speculation by reducing that line, with the example of the wrang-wrang's own life, to an absurdity."
[edit] External links
- Bokononism All of the text from Cat's Cradle which refers to Bokononism (including the Books of Bokonon).
- The Books of Bokonon - a collection of all excerpts from the Books of Bokonon from Cat's Cradle
