What is the one thing the whole human race has in common? Religion. Eighty four percent of the world's population has a religion. The largest religion is Christianity, the second is Muslim ( Harper, Jennifer. “84 Percent of the World Population Has Faith; a Third Are Christian.” The Washington Times). As a human, believing in something is important but trusting that everything that is being taught is 100% true is hard to prove. People live day by day from those beliefs, so imagine a religion based on lies. Kurt Vonnegut explores this idea in his book Cat's Cradle. In Cat's Cradle he creates a religion called Bokononism which is based on foma. Foma means harmless untruths or lies (Vonnegut 265). But why did he create this religion and what does
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The narrator of this book is named Jonah, which is odd because the name comes from the bible, from the story of Jonah and the whale. As mentioned Jonah was once a Christian but converted to a Bokononist. “ I would have been a Bokononist then, if there had been anyone to teach me the bittersweet lies of Bokonon.” (Vonnegut 2). He sometimes feels that God is trying to control him. In the book Jonah is on a mission to ask important Americans what they were doing the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. He was going to turn those interviews to a book that would have been called The Day the World End (Vonnegut 1). During his journey of creating the book he searches for one of the creators of the bomb name Felix Hoenikker, but finds out that he is dead, so he messages his children. Which brings us to the next character Newton Hoenikker. He is the first to message back Jonah. Newt Hoenikker is the third child of Felix Hoenikker. He is a painter, but he is really not that good at it . Newt does not believe in religion. When Jonah ask Julian Castle if he could get a copy of the books of Bokonon Newt snorted and said “Religion” (Vonnegut 183) when asked what he meant by that he says “See the cat? See the cradle?”(Vonnegut
The narrator of this book is named Jonah, which is odd because the name comes from the bible, from the story of Jonah and the whale. As mentioned Jonah was once a Christian but converted to a Bokononist. “ I would have been a Bokononist then, if there had been anyone to teach me the bittersweet lies of Bokonon.” (Vonnegut 2). He sometimes feels that God is trying to control him. In the book Jonah is on a mission to ask important Americans what they were doing the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. He was going to turn those interviews to a book that would have been called The Day the World End (Vonnegut 1). During his journey of creating the book he searches for one of the creators of the bomb name Felix Hoenikker, but finds out that he is dead, so he messages his children. Which brings us to the next character Newton Hoenikker. He is the first to message back Jonah. Newt Hoenikker is the third child of Felix Hoenikker. He is a painter, but he is really not that good at it . Newt does not believe in religion. When Jonah ask Julian Castle if he could get a copy of the books of Bokonon Newt snorted and said “Religion” (Vonnegut 183) when asked what he meant by that he says “See the cat? See the cradle?”(Vonnegut