Bokonon Mason Dowling

In Cat's Cradle, the character of Bokonon functions as a trickster, living by choice outside of the establishment he has had a part in forming. Additionally, though not present during the events of the novel until the last chapter, his rhetoric sets the tone for much of the book. Furthermore, his character is a parallel for that of Dr. Hoenikker, the idiot savant Father of the Atomic Bomb.

The trickster in Hyde as connected to Bokonon:

Hoenikker/Bokonon shared beliefs, contrasts:

Neither believe in absolute truth; it seems as though they consider that to communicate is to lie, inherently, in at least some small way. Miss Faust, who rather espouses that "truth, all by itself" is insufcient "for a person" in life. She seems to have faith in both human emotion and divinity; a faith removed from the variable of truth. "There was (a conversation) where he bet I couldn't tell him anything that was absolutely true. So I said to him, 'God is love.'" Hoenikker, instead of arguing against faith, merely questions what it is grounded on. His

statement, "What is god? What is love?" constitutes a postmodern mode of thinking consistent with Vonnegut's overall analysis of the human condition. This philosophy also seems to be connected to nihilistic philosophy, a thought that leads me to connect, in certain ways, Bokonon, postmodern thinking, and Neitzche. The idea of stripping ideas down, of removing unnecessary falsehoods and assumptions from one's thought, in order to build those thoughts back up to a more positively progressive way of thinking is not one usually associated with Nihilists, but it remains a fundamental aspect of nihilism as a doctrine. Bokonon and Hoenikker both seem to understand the limits of human understanding. "He always said he would never take his own advice, because he knew it was worthless." (273) Bokonon understands that all advice is, in the face of death, worthless. What matters is nding a way to enjoy the time one spends living, waiting to die.

"I had a silly, cinematic notion of climbing that peak with Mona. But what would it mean?" (271) Shows the author's grasping blindly at the idea of meaning, something not very Bokononist indeed! It seems that Bokonon, in the spirit of Camus, LeSaussre, and Samuel Beckett, knows meaning, absolute truth, is a sort of carrot we construct before our mulish heads, in order to keep going in circles thinking that we always work towards the essential. Bokonon and Mrs. Faust both present alternatives to this; Bokonon's that we should empower ourselves with this knowledge to make the most out of knowing we'll never get the carrot, Mrs. Faust's that choosing to believe the carrot is real makes it so. This pair of philosophers, absurdist and existentialist, respectively, cover some alternatives to despair at the lack of a carrot, so to speak, that many associate with declarations that "God is dead", "There is no meaning" or on a smaller scale, one that might apply to both Newt and myself, "Painting is dead". If one views these statements as

equally false in context with their converse statements "God isn't dead," "there is meaning", Painting is not dead". they are both equally true, and all that remains is to pick which one seems most appropriate for the situation. As the book of Bokonon says, "Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy." Bokonon equalizes the world by converting every idea, by virtue of being a human construction, into a falsehood, reserving truth for some other power. From a world of falsehoods, all that remains is to, as the statement goes, "choose your poison". Hoenikker, in parallel, does a great deal to neutralize the world in a physical way, for surely as Bokonon plays with the mental constructions of our world, Hoenikker's home is in messing with the physical laws. Ice-9, in a physical sense, effects matter much the same way that Bokononist thinking effects philosophy and semantics.