Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson Character Analysis in Cat’s Cradle

Bokonon is a mysterious figure of great influence. John learns that everyone on San Lorenzo practices Bokonon’s invented religion—Bokononism—despite it being officially outlawed. It is a religion founded on foma: lies that bring comfort. Bokonon was born Lionel Boyd Johnson, and in his early life travelled widely, at one time studying at the London School of Economics. Eventually, he landed on San Lorenzo with a U.S. army deserter, Edward McCabe. There, the two men wanted to start a utopia, but quickly realized that improving the lot of the people was beyond their capabilities. Bokonon thus invented his religion to bring comfort, meaning and excitement to the lives of the islanders, asking McCabe to outlaw it in order to create a sense of purposeful danger. Bokonon was Mona and Philip Castle’s tutor when they were children. The book is littered with quotes from Bokonon’s own religious text, which usually expresses the absurdity and hypocrisy of humankind. Bokonon only makes a real appearance at the novel’s close, when John finds him by the roadside trying to come up with an ending to his religious text. This ending says that, if he had his time again, he would write a “history of human stupidity.”

Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson Quotes in Cat’s Cradle

The Cat’s Cradle quotes below are all either spoken by Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson or refer to Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

When I was a much younger man, I began to collect material for a book to be called The Day the World Ended.

The book was to be factual.

The book was to be an account of what important Americans had done on the day when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

It was to be a Christian book. I was a Christian then.

I am a Bokononist now.

Related Characters: John (speaker), Dr. Felix Hoenikker, Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson

Page Number and Citation: 1-2

Explanation and Analysis:

I do not intend that this book be a tract on behalf of Bokononism. I should like to offer a Bokononist warning about it, however. The first sentence in The Books of Bokonon is this:

“All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.”

My Bokononist warning is this:

Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.

So be it.

Related Characters: John (speaker), Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 5-6

Explanation and Analysis:

“Whenever I meet a young Hoosier, I tell them, ‘You call me Mom.’”

“Uh huh.”

“Let me hear you say it,” she urged.

“Mom?”

She smiled and let go of my arm. Some piece of clockwork had completed its cycle. My calling Hazel “Mom” had shut it off, and now Hazel was rewinding it for the next Hoosier to come along.

Hazel’s obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass, of a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a granfalloon.

Related Characters: Hazel Crosby (speaker), John (speaker), Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson

Page Number and Citation: 91

Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 127

Explanation and Analysis:

What I had seen, of course, was the Bokononist ritual of boko-maru, or the mingling of awarenesses.

We Bokononists believe that it is impossible to be sole-to-sole with another person without loving the person, provided the feet of both persons are clean and nicely tended.

The basis for the foot ceremony is this “Calypso”:

We will touch our feet, yes,
Yes, for all we’re worth,
And we will love each other, yes,
Yes, like we love our Mother Earth.

Related Characters: John (speaker), Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 158

Explanation and Analysis:

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, “Why, why, why?”
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.

Related Characters: Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 182

Explanation and Analysis:

If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.

Related Characters: Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson (speaker), John

Related Symbols: Ice-Nine

Page Number and Citation: 287

Explanation and Analysis:

Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson Character Timeline in Cat’s Cradle

The timeline below shows where the character Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson appears in Cat’s Cradle. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Absurdity and Meaninglessness Theme Icon

John quotes from The Books of Bokonon, explaining that a karass “ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries.” He recites Bokonon’s... (full context)

John quotes Bokonon again. This time, it’s an autobiographical anecdote that talks about “an Episcopalian lady” who professed... (full context)

...is intended to examine what is his karass “have been up to.” He explains that Bokonon is a religion founded on foma: “shameless lies” (a direct quote from The Books of... (full context)

...seems nonplused about becoming the new ambassador. Present-day John tells the reader that according to Bokonon members of a duprass usually die “within a week of each other.” When it came... (full context)

Engrossed, John reads about Bokonon’s theory of “dynamic tension.” John laughs to himself, thinking that the phrase is accidentally the... (full context)

John reads about Bokonon’s life. He was born in 1891, was originally an “Episcopalian and a British subject on... (full context)

John narrates the story of Bokonon’s life as told by Philip Castle’s book. Bokonon went to the London School of Economics... (full context)

Governance, Politics, and Nationhood Theme Icon

Bokonon then travelled around the world, working various odd-jobs. One of these was as a gardener... (full context)

Bokonon was then tasked with sailing the yacht belonging to one of the Rumfoords. This ship... (full context)

One day, Bokonon sought shelter from a hurricane by landing in Haiti. Here he met Earl McCabe, a... (full context)

Bokonon was enchanted by San Lorenzo, feeling that he was fated to end up there. “Bokonon”... (full context)

...romance with Philip Castle, and was turned into a “national erotic symbol” by “Papa” Monzano. Bokonon was her tutor. (full context)

John reads about Bokonon and McCabe’s arrival on San Lorenzo. At the time, the locals were destitute and disease-ridden.... (full context)

...conquered by various nations, including France, Spain, Denmark, England, and the Netherlands. When McCabe and Johnson arrived and initiated their take-over, Castle Sugar (the sugar company) made no attempt to stop... (full context)

Bokonon and McCabe dreamed of making San Lorenzo a utopia. Bokonon invented his religion: “I made... (full context)

...barren and stony, with just one city: Bolivar. The book tells John that McCabe and Bokonon planned for San Lorenzo’s total income to be divided equally between its inhabitants—but it never... (full context)

...passengers convert their American money into local currency, called “Corporals.” John notices wanted posters for Bokonon, and warning that any practitioners of the religion will be killed on “the hook.” (full context)

...limousine. He gives a signal and the crowd sing the national anthem, originally written by Bokonon: “What a rich, lucky island are we! Our enemies quail, for they know they will... (full context)

...to the Casa Mona hotel. The Crosbys ask the cab driver about the identity of Bokonon, whom the driver describes as a “very bad man.” The driver explains that Bokonon is... (full context)

...is a writer and has come to see Julian Castle, Philip’s father. Philip explains that Bokonon was his tutor as a boy, as well as Mona’s. (full context)

Julian goes on, saying that Bokonon and McCabe threw out the Christian priests when they arrived on the island. They “cynically... (full context)

Bokonon also came up with “the hook,” having seen something similar at Madame Tussaud’s in London.... (full context)

Life on the island remained “short and brutish and mean.” But the legend of Bokonon made “the happiness of the people grow.” Over time, the situation made both McCabe and... (full context)

According to Bokonon, the sun, borasisi, held the moon, pabu, in its arms, wanting a “fiery child.” But... (full context)

...he is too limited to be the new leader. John, from the present-day, explains that Bokonon calls maturity “a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said... (full context)

John quotes some of Bokonon’s words about boko-maru: “My soles, my soles! / My soul, my soul, / Go there,... (full context)

...was once Emperor of San Lorenzo. John sees a hook which is reserved especially for Bokonon, and resolves that, as ruler, he will chop it down. (full context)

...feel his way along with Christianity, since Catholicism and Protestantism had been outlawed along with Bokonon.” Accordingly, he has to “make up a lot of new stuff.” (full context)

...bed made of “a golden dinghy”; it is the lifeboat that once brought him and Bokonon ashore. “Papa” is clearly in a lot of pain. He is wearing a necklace with... (full context)

...it. “Papa” croaks that it doesn’t matter who is president. He tells John to “get Bokonon” and kill him. and to apologize on his behalf that he never killed Bokonon. He... (full context)

...He feels that in writing it he has to “lean on God.” He considers inviting Bokonon to join his government, “bringing about a sort of millennium for the people.” (full context)

John realizes that, if he did bring Bokonon back, he’d have to then improve the lives of the inhabitants: “good things for all... (full context)

John rejoins Frank, Hazel, and H. Lowe Crosby. Frank is explaining to them that Bokonon is “against science,” which Crosby can’t understand. Hazel asks her husband for the name of... (full context)

...Frank, was put in the oven: “it was the only thing to do.” John quotes Bokonon: “History! Read it and weep!” (full context)

John looks in The Books of Bokonon for comfort. The first book implores the reader to close the book, as everything contained... (full context)

...room that makes the fan move, while making up a tune to a verse by Bokonon that says, “we do, doodely do, doodely do, doodely, do / What we must, muddily... (full context)

...something that has been newly written on the wall in white paint, a quote from Bokonon: “someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end, / And our God will take... (full context)

By the dead, there is a note signed by Bokonon. It says that the people in the bowl survived the “freezing of the sea,” and... (full context)

John and Mona can’t see any sign of Bokonon. John is outraged at the “gall of the man.” Mona laughs, saying that “it’s all... (full context)

...light.” Hazel wishes she’d studied the Chinese more, when she had the chance. John quotes Bokonon: “Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, ‘It might have been.’” (full context)

...long way to alleviating your own social problems.” Walking away, John remembers a quote from Bokonon: “beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself... (full context)

...age among us,” describing Hazel as old “beyond having even a Mongolian idiot.” John quotes Bokonon about midgets: “midget, midget, midget, how he struts and winks, / For he knows a... (full context)

John cries out about Bokononism: “such a depressing religion!” He and Newt talk about utopias. John recalls that Bokonon’s seventh... (full context)

...past “an old Negro man,” who is alive. John realizes that he has just seen Bokonon. (full context)

John goes to talk to Bokonon, who is sitting barefoot on a rock, his feet “frosty with ice-nine.” John asks what... (full context)

Bokonon, shrugging, hands John a piece of paper. It reads: “if I were a younger man,... (full context)

Cat’s Cradle

Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson Character Analysis

Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson Quotes in Cat’s Cradle

Chapter 1 Quotes

Chapter 4 Quotes

Chapter 42 Quotes

Chapter 58 Quotes

Chapter 72 Quotes

Chapter 81 Quotes

Chapter 127 Quotes

Bokonon / Lionel Boyd Johnson Character Timeline in Cat’s Cradle