Cat’s Cradle: Chapter 47 Summary & Analysis

Engrossed, John reads about Bokonon’s theory of “dynamic tension.” John laughs to himself, thinking that the phrase is accidentally the same as one used by a “mail-order muscle-builder.” Then he reads that Bokonon was in fact an alumnus of that muscle-building school. Dynamic tension is the belief that “good societies could be built only by pitting good against evil, and by keeping the tension between the two high at all times.”