Lionel Boyd Johnson

The story, and I emphasize story, of Lionel Boyd Johnson, better known to the island dwellers of San Lorenzo as Bokonon, is one of Vonnegut's firmest pokes at organized religion in Cat's Cradle. Reading through the chapters entitled “Just Like Saint Augustine” and “A Fish Pitched Up by an Angry Sea” that outline Johnson's life, I was forced to constantly readjust to the absurdity of his crusade. From his questionable origins as the heir to a pirate fortune to his constant misfortune at sea that eventually force him to the shores of San Lorenzo, Johnson's life could not be labelled anything short of extraordinary. Of course, his adventures and trials parallel those of Saint Augustine, who was in his time a true renaissance man whose ideas challenged yet eventually melded with Western Christianity in the time of the Reformation. However, what was more notable to me was this idea that every great religious leader or founder must experience extraordinary trials and successes. Jesus, Muhammed and Siddhartha (Buddha) are all examples of this. This parallel in the character of Johnson or Bokonon really stood out to me when I read these chapters. However, I was also reminded of this theme again when it is revealed that the banishment of Bokonon and the forbidden nature of Bokononism, was entirely Bokonon's own doing “in order to give the religious life of the people more zest.” It was even Bokonon's own idea for the “hook as the proper punishment for Bokononists.” Vonnegut's writing here I found more amusing. Suffering as an essential component of religion is an oft parodied concept used to determine the strength of a certain religion's followers. Its a sort of 'whose's got more cahones' kind of thing that seems to sometimes be irrelevant to modern life. Of course, I don’t mean to offend or forget the billions of people to whom religion is still closely bonded to suffering. I only question the aim of comparing the suffering of various religions over the ages as some sort of marker of legitimacy. This, I believe, is also what Vonnegut may have been hinting at. There's also the question of truth in the story of Bokonon. Just as some of the great religious texts may be guilty of embellishing or alternatively interpreting the lives of the prophets, the story of Bokonon as told in Cat's Cradle, while not supernatural, cannot be trusted. Its also a great example of untruths as opposed to lies. Bokononism is built on lies. We as readers are told this. Bokonon believes in the power of lies in religion. It only makes sense that his own story is told from a skewed perspective. Ultimately, I don't think the truth or the quest for the truth is the important thing in Bokononism, just as it is irrelevant throughout the novel.