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Description

One of Vonnegut's major works, this is an apocalyptic tale of the planet's ultimate fate, featuring a cast of unlikely heroes.

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis

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Cast of Characters/Important People

Memorable Quotes

  • “All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies.”
  • “We Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon "If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons," writes Bokonon, "that person may be a member of your karass." At another point in The Books of Bokonon he tells us, "Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass." By that he means that a karass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries. It is as free form as an amoeba.”
  • “Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”
  • “Maturity,” Bokonon tells us, “is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.”
  • “He always said he would never take his own advice, because he knew it was worthless.”

First Sentence

Call me Jonah.

Glossary

  • Karass: A group of people who, often unknowingly, work together to do god's will.
  • Duprass: Karass with only two people.
  • Granfalloon: A false karass, people who imagine they have a connection that does not really exist.
  • Wampeter: Centrel point of a karass.
  • Foma: Harmless Untruths.
  • Sinookas: Intertwining Tendrils of peoples lives.
  • Vin-dit: A sudden shove in the direction of bokonism.
  • Sin-wat: a person who want's all of someone's love for themself.
  • Pool-pah: Wrath of god.
  • Busy, busy, busy: What bokonists say when they think about how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.
  • Boku-maru: Supreme act of worship of the bokonists, which is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the naked soles of the feet of two persons

Authors & Contributors

  1. Kurt Vonnegut (Author)
 

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