There are many important
characters in the novel, but I would say the most important ones are John (the
narrator), Bokonon (who represents religion/lies), the Hoenikkers (who
represent scientists/truth), and Mona (John’s love interest).
John, or Jonah, is the
main voice of the novel. Despite his central role, he is actually the most
“normal” character as well. All of the other characters in the novel have their
own flaws and shortcomings, which Vonnegut had given them for specific reasons,
but John on the other hand is a typical person that can relate easily to the
reader. One of the things that he focuses on is his connection with Bokononism.
By the end of the novel, he considers himself a Bokononist, but while telling
his story, he often refers to Bokononist concepts and quotes to convey an idea.
“Bokonon tells us: A lover’s a liar, To himself he lies. The truthful are loveless, Like oysters their eyes!”So my instructions are clear, I suppose. I am to remember my Mona as having been sublime.” (p.232)
“I walked away from Frank, just as The Books of Bokonon advised me to do.” (p.281)
Bokonon “was a Negro,
born an Episcopalian and a British subject on the island of Tobago.” Bokonon is a fairly eccentric and
obscure character throughout the novel, never explicitly seen until the end,
but nevertheless plays a fundamental role as the founder and leader of the
Bokononist faith. His prophetic teachings, found in the Books of Bokonon (the holy scripture of Bokononism), are scattered
throughout the novel in various quotes and calypsos (West Indian music in
syncopated African rhythm).
Bokonon has a very
pessimistic outlook on the human condition. He proposes that truth has little
purpose in the grand scheme of things, as the reality of mankind is harsh and
cruel. Instead, he tends to look at things on a grand, cosmic scale, and
considers our memories during our time on Earth to be the one thing we should
take with us and be thankful for. In that sense, lies may serve us much better.
I think this one quote from his Fourteenth Book really sums up his perspective:
“The Fourteenth Book is entitled, “What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?” It doesn’t take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period.
This is it: “Nothing.” (p.245)
Dr. Asa Breed is the
scientist who presided over Dr. Felix Hoenikker’s work and research. He is the
one who John mostly talks to in the beginning of the novel in order to get
information about Felix Hoenikker. Dr. Asa Breed represents everything that
Vonnegut satirizes about the scientific community: their genius and potential
for truly amazing scientific discoveries combined with their complete lack of
basic morals and responsibility. In one passage, Dr. Breed is talking to John
about Felix’s work on ice-nine. He describes it as a brilliant concept that
could effectively solve the problem that the Marine general originally came to
him about. However, he doesn’t stop once to consider the possible ramifications
of using such a substance, namely the inevitable freezing of every water supply
on earth and the subsequent death of all life.
He raised a finger and winked at me. “But suppose, young man, that one Marine had with him a tiny capsule containing a seed of ice-nine, a new way for the atoms of water to stack and lock, to freeze. If that Marine threw that seed into the nearest puddle …?”
“The puddle would freeze?” I guessed.
“And all the muck around the puddle?”
“It would freeze?”
“And all the puddles in the frozen muck?”
“They would freeze?”
“And the pools and the streams in the frozen muck?”
“They would freeze?”“You bet they would!” he cried.
“And the United States Marines would rise from the swamp and march on!” (p.47)
Dr. Felix Hoenikker was
one of the contributing scientists on the Manhattan Project and the
intellectual “genius” behind ice-nine. Like Asa Breed, Felix is portrayed as
lacking in morals and responsibility, but has an even more exaggerated
childlike state of mind. He has absolutely no regard for long-term consequences
and views everything as a game. On the day that the first atomic bomb was
tested, Felix just sat at home playing “cat’s cradle” on a loop of string. In
his own Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he says:
“Ladies and Gentlemen. I stand before you now because I never stopped dawdling like an eight-year-old on a spring morning on his way to school. Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn. I am a very happy man. Thank you.” (p.11)
In a letter response to
John, Newt Hoenikker talks about his father:
“Father spoke up…He said, ‘I wonder about turtles.’…’After the turtle incident, Father got so interested in turtles that he stopped working on the atom bomb…So one night they went into his laboratory and stole the turtles and the aquarium. Father never said a word about the disappearance of the turtles. He just came to work the next day and looked for things to play with and think about, and everything there was to play with and think about had something to do with the bomb.” (p.15)
We can see that the
implications of what Felix does is of little importance to him. He treats
everything as a game. He’ll work on whatever is interesting to him with little
emotional investment involved. However, Felix was just as unfeeling toward his
own family as he was toward the turtles. In this quote, we can see that Felix
is actually quite despicable:
“And, in that same miserable family, there’s that great big, gawky girl, over six feet tall. That man, who’s so famous for having a great mind, he pulled that girl out of high school in her sophomore year so he could go on having some woman take care of him. All she had going for her was the clarinet she’d played in the Ilium High School band, the Marching Hundred.“After she left school,” said Breed, “nobody ever asked her out. She didn’t have any friends, and the old man never even thought to give her any money to go anywhere.” (p.71)
The following passage
essentially sums up Felix’s character:
“I suppose it’s high treason and ungrateful and ignorant and backward and anti-intellectual to call a dead man as famous as Felix Hoenikker a son of a bitch. I know all about how harmless and gentle and dreamy he was supposed to be, how he’d never hurt a fly, how he didn’t care about money and power and fancy clothes and automobiles and things, how he wasn’t like the rest of us, how he was better than the rest of us, how he was so innocent he was practically a Jesus—except for the Son of God part …”“But,” he said, “but how the hell innocent is a man who helps make a thing like an atomic bomb? And how can you say a man had a good mind when he couldn’t even bother to do anything when the best-hearted, most beautiful woman in the world, his own wife, was dying for lack of love and understanding …”He shuddered, “Sometimes I wonder if he wasn’t born dead. I never met a man who was less interested in the living. Sometimes I think that’s the trouble with the world: too many people in high places who are stone-cold dead.” (p.67)
Frank Hoenikker, like
his father, lacks social skills and a basic human capacity for empathy. As a
child, he stayed to himself and put bugs into jars forcing them to fight. One
day Angela found him and asked what he was doing, to which he responded:
‘Experimenting.’
“That’s what Frank always used to say when people asked him what he thought he was doing. He always said, ‘Experimenting.’” (p.15)
Frank’s cold and
calculating nature, combined with his desire for control led him to seek a
position of power in San Lorenzo, which he obtained by giving up ice-nine and
potentially endangering the world.
Near the end of the
novel, Frank is in line to become San Lorenzo’s next president once Papa
Monzano dies, but instead asks John to take his place and provide the public
image, which Frank stays occupied with the “technical” aspects of leadership.
John comments:
“And I realized with chagrin that my agreeing to be boss had freed Frank to do what he wanted to do more than anything else, to do what his father had done: to receive honors and creature comforts while escaping human responsibilities. He was accomplishing this by going down a spiritual oubliette.” (p.224)
All of the Hoenikkers
are guilty of pursuing their own selfish desires without considering the
potential consequences of their actions for the human race. All of them had
traded ice-nine, with all of its potential dangers, for personal gain. When
Angela confronts Frank about giving “Papa” Manzano his chip of ice-nine for his
position as Major General, Frank responds:
“I bought myself a job, just the way you bought yourself a tomcat husband, just the way Newt bought himself a week on Cape Cod with a Russian midget!” (p.243)
Mona Aamons Monzano is
the unusually beautiful adopted daughter of Papa Manzano (dictator of San
Lorenzo). She becomes the nation’s sex symbol as a result of her beauty, and
John falls in love with her. However, she is entirely superficial and does not
understand true love or basic human emotions. She is a devout follower of
Bokononism and claims that she “loves everyone”. Her love is not the result of
true devotion to another human being, but rather something that she has
“learned” to profess. In the following passage, John asks Mona not to love
anyone else (since they are getting married):
“I don’t want you to do it with anybody but me from now on,” I declared.Tears filled her eyes. She adored her promiscuity; was angered that I should try to make her feel shame. “I make people happy. Love is good, not bad.” (p.207)