Avoiding Reality in Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle

Barry Diller once said, " This is a world in which reasons are made up because reality is too painful," implying that people would rather live within a created state of reality than to face what is ultimately true. Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle reveal the truth behind human ways, and how people avoid dealing with reality at all costs. Breakfast of Champions explains the way in which human tendencies are defense mechanisms, while Cat's Cradle proves that all truth is eventually lost because human ways are so warped. In each novel Vonnegut depicts human nature to shun reality.

Throughout the novel, Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut portrays humans as being destructive, stereotypical people with a warped sense of communication. All of which are common human tendencies that are used solely as defense mechanisms.

Vonnegut's, Breakfast of Champions, shows the need for humans to stereotype. People tend to focus on very irrelevant details, such as race and sex, rather than more important issues. People comment that " the agency [is] on the black side of town," and that is where the " agricultural machines" are living (Vonnegut 41,73). Asserting that the black people have their own side of town and are not human, but " hundred-nigger [machinery]," used to work in the fields (150). People also tend to see household work as " women work," and that is exactly how it is referred to, which shows how women are considered to be inferior beings. (251). Vonnegut determines that although these details are not relevant they do serve a purpose; they point out a very common Black Humor theme, the inadequacy to deal with actual human problems (Vonnegut Web N.P.).

Kurt Vonnegut then addresses the way people communicate. " Most people… [are] so insecure when they [speak], so they [keep] their sentences short and simple" (Vonnegut 142). Human beings lack communication skills and are therefore insecure with all conversation. They do not want to stumble upon any truth that may force them to confront reality. People are also "enchanted by sound" they will buy into anything that seems pleasing (113). Objects are popular if they possess an obliging name or because one simply " [likes] the sound of it" (175). People must have things that they can believe make them happy or good people; without that people are faced with truth.