 Bokonon, the religion's founder, was a former leader of the island who created Bokononism as part of a utopian project to give people purpose and community in the face of the island's unsolvable poverty and squalor.As a deliberate attempt to give Bokononism an alluring sense of forbidden glamor, the religion is nominally outlawed (forcing Bokonon to live in hiding in the jungle) by the nominally-Christian government of its dictator, "Papa" Monzano, who threatens all opposition with impalement on a large hook.Intrigued by Bokononism, the narrator later deduces the strange reality that nearly all residents of San Lorenzo, even including "Papa" Monzano, practice it in secret, and so religious persecution by the hook is actually rare.