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Terms
A karass is the Bokononist term for a group of people brought together to do God’s work—though the purpose of that work is not something they can ever be fully aware of.
Karass Quotes in Cat’s Cradle
The Cat’s Cradle quotes below are all either spoken by Karass or refer to Karass. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 42
Quotes
“Whenever I meet a young Hoosier, I tell them, ‘You call me Mom.’”
“Uh huh.”
“Let me hear you say it,” she urged.
“Mom?”
She smiled and let go of my arm. Some piece of clockwork had completed its cycle. My calling Hazel “Mom” had shut it off, and now Hazel was rewinding it for the next Hoosier to come along.
Hazel’s obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass, of a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a granfalloon.
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Karass Term Timeline in Cat’s Cradle
The timeline below shows where the term Karass appears in Cat’s Cradle. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1. The Day the World Ended
...book, he says; now, he is a Bokononist. Bokononists believe humanity is organized into teams—a “karass”—that “do God’s Will without ever discovering what they are doing.”
(full context)
Chapter 2. Nice, Nice, Very Nice
John quotes from The Books of Bokonon, explaining that a karass “ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries.” He recites Bokonon’s “Fifty-third Calypso,” which explains...
(full context)
Chapter 4. A Tentative Tangling of Tendrils
John explains that this book is intended to examine what is his karass “have been up to.” He explains that Bokonon is a religion founded on foma: “shameless...
(full context)
John outlines who he sees as the members of his karass: Dr. Felix Hoenikker, the inventor of the atomic bomb, and Hoenikker’s children, Newt, Angela and...
(full context)
Chapter 24. What a Wampeter Is
John introduces another Bokononist term: “wampeter.” No karass is without a wampeter, he says, “just as no wheel is without a hub.” The...
(full context)
Chapter 36. Miaow
...and the rest of the apartment vandalized. John speculates that Sherman was part of his karass, serving as “wrang-wrang”—“a person who steers people away from a line of speculation by reducing...
(full context)
Chapter 41. A Karass Built for Two
...wife, Claire. John describes them as “lovebirds.” Present-day John reasons that they were a “duprass”—a karass made of only two persons. He therefore excludes them from his own karass.
(full context)
Chapter 42. Bicycles for Afghanistan
...She tells him to call him “Mom.” Present-day John introduces the Bokononist term, “granfalloon”—“a false karass, of a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the was God gets thing...
(full context)
Chapter 83. Dr. Schlichter von Koenigswald Approaches the Break-Even Point
...the year 3010.” John, from the present-day, says Dr. Koenigswald is another member of his karass.
(full context)
