In one of the first pages of the book, before the story actually begins, Vonnegut quotes The Book of Bokonon about living by the foma. He cites the quotation as “The Books of Bokonon I: 15,” which is how one would refer to a passage from the Bible (for example – John 4:24). This is how Vonnegut begins, what I perceive to be, a mock on religion and what society attempts to learn from religion – truth.
Vonnegut says that the religion of Bokononism began on the island of the Republic of San Lorenzo, a place where “they just don’t have any crime,” and “they’re all Christians” (pg. 93). This land where people live in pure form could be compared to the Garden of Eden, the paradise of Christian beliefs. Vonnegut also throws in several song-type passages from Bokonon, called “calypsos,” which can be paralleled to the psalms of the Bible.
Also, Vonnegut makes San Lorenzo an island that, as stated above, is filled with Christians, and Bokononism is banned. However, as the story progresses, readers learn that almost all of the inhabitants of the island do, in fact, practice Bokononism as opposed to Christianity. Characters of the story even refer to Jesus as “him” and ironically name an army camp “Fort Jesus,” showing no reverence to the Christian figure.
So why start out saying one thing about the people only to show that they feel the opposite in regards to the religion? It could be to show that society is easily persuaded, not knowing how to believe that they individually want – only looking for what seems to be a truth to believe in. It seems that through the parallelism that Vonnegut is trying to say that society is so devout to specific religions and yet they have no clue as to what it is they believe in – people just want to be told what the truth is and believe it.
By making Bokononism seem so similar to Christianity, Vonnegut may be saying that Christianity is just a device for society to believe they have knowledge, when it is really just a bunch of lies that people are comfortable believing in.
Wonderful post! You provided excellent parallels to make your argument of Bokononism : Christianity. And I was excited to see you take up the "why" of such a constructed analogy. By providing a methodology to Vonnegut's seeming "lies," you effectively represent a universal desire: belief in knowing. Well done.
ReplyDelete