Another Level of Truth

                      “All the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.” (Vonnegut, 5).  Honestly when I first read this line, I could not make any sense of it.  “Is Bokonon telling the truth which makes this statement a lie?  Does this mean he’s actually saying all the lies I tell you are truths?”  I started to get an answer to my confusion only after reading more about Frank Hoenikker.

                Jonah describes Dr. Hoenikker as “father of the atomic bomb, father of three children, and father of ice-nine” even though the title of father could not be further from the truth (Vonnegut, 114).  When the doctor accepts his Nobel Prize, he refers to himself as the “eight-year old kid” who “never stopped dawdling” (Vonnegut, 11).  Despite his age, he, like his two younger sons, was tucked into blankets by Angela, and he never lost the sense of aimless curiosity that commonly drives children.  Jonah calls Frank the father of various things, but in the end, his description of Frank merely captures the surface value of his accomplishments.  

                By explicitly emphasizing the difference in Frank’s actual role and his title as a “father,” Vonnegut helps explain the meaning behind the first line in The Books of Bokonon.  While Dr. Hoenikker is factually the father of all the things Jonah describes him as, he is also anything but a true father.  Vonnegut wants the readers to understand that there is always another truth underneath the surface of every person and situation.  Another quick example of this motto would be the index entry that Jonah shows the Miltons.  Although in the eyes of an ordinary person the index is merely an index, a professional indexer such as Claire Milton can see some other meaning beneath the surface of all the page numbers and short inserts which allows her to read the author’s character.  At the start of this course, we have been challenged to question everything we read and never take something for granted.  I, however, believe that the right approach is not thinking everything is a lie but rather everything has another truth waiting to be found.