Breakfast of Champions
"Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery."(p.221)
Introduction
Breakfast of Champions; or Goodbye Blue Monday is Kurt Vonnegut's seventh novel. He wrote it in 1972, as he himself says, for his fiftieth birthday. It is Vonnegut's own parody of himself and his works. "The various themes and mannerisms that have animated the earlier novels are seen here in a grotesque, cartoon version of themselves," (Todd). It is a confrontation of tragedy of America brought forth by Vonnegut's sensitivity to tragedy (Uphaus), where Vonnegut "seems to rub middle America's nose in the sheer ugliness of life." (Merill)
The story
Breakfast of Champions is a story of "two lonesome, skinny old men on a planet which was dying fast,"(p.???). One of these two men is Dwayne Hoover, a "fabulously well-to-do" Pontiac Dealer, and the other is Kilgore Trout, an "unknown" and unsuccessful science fiction writer. These two characters are destined to meet in Midland City and Kilgore Trout's book Now It Can Be Told is destined to turn Dwayne Hoover into "homicidal maniac".
How the novel is written
The novel attacks many things: slavery, racism, commercial greed, jingoism, ecology, capitalism, imperialism, overpopulation etc., all of these aimed precisely at modern American society. Vonnegut "brings a remarcable air of discovery to these themes, the pretense that no one has quite seen before the stark outlines of our hypocrisy," (Todd). Vonnegut is "impolite" in his writing about these matters. He was taught to this impoliteness when he was a kid (p.2) by Phoebe Hurty -- the person this novel is dedicated to.
The whole book is written in quite familiar style which was used in Vonnegut's previous novel Slaughterhouse Five. The style can be defined by one line from it: "If accident will" (Vonnegut 1969, p.2). Breakfast of Champions also has the vague image of absolute chaos. Vonnegut denounced books that "make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, that it has lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end," (p.209). But chaos is not only a way in which Vonnegut writes, it is also what Vonnegut writes about.
As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become
more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions
made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity
Vonnegut and Jackson, through the use of well written short stories, have managed to address concerning issues in today’s societies. Through the use of Harrison Bergeron Kurt Vonnegut was able to address the growing issue of equality, this is a very important issue as many people in modern societies view the idea of equality to be incredible. Shirley Jackson through The Lottery addressed the concerning issue of societies blindly following religions and traditions due to superstitions and the unwillingness to change. These dystopian texts demonstrate the inevitable outcome these problems will eventually cause.
Language is an important part of who we are. It influences the way we think and behave on a great scale. However, sometimes it is forced upon us to go in different directions just so we can physically and mentally feel as if we belong to the society in which we live in. Just as we see in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez’s “A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, both authors faced some challenges along the way by coping with two different languages, while still trying to achieve the social position which they desired.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was an ordinary man, a great father and an extraordinary writer. He was born in indianapolis Indiana. As a fourth generation German-American, he would later serve in the Second World War. He had the capability to include spaceships,vulgarity, and childish characteristics while still causing his readers to learn crucial life lessons. Yet the most interesting thing is what was behind his curtain. It is what captivated, intrigued, and how he analyzed the Midwestern region that would eventually differentiate him from other authors. Kurt Vonnegut was inspired by technological advances, the effects of WWII, and humanity.
Vonnegut's writing style throughout the novel is very flip, light, and sarcastic. The narrator's observations and the events occurring during the novel reflect a dark view of humanity which can only be mocked by humor. At the beginning of the novel the narrator is researching for a book he is writing. The book was to be about the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and the lives of the people who created the bomb. The narrator travels through the plot of the story, with characters flying in and out, in almost a daze. He is involved in events which are helplessly beyond his control, but which are inevitably leading to a destination at the end.
What makes a book a true classic? Is it in its age, the distinction of its author, the number of copies it sells? I believe it is in none of these things. A true classic is a book that can make you feel, emoting with all of its characters, even the ones you don’t expect to empathize with. Its characters cannot be without faults-they must be as human as the book’s readers, or they will be forgotten as just another character in an endless line of too-perfect protagonists. Any great novel seeks to explore human nature-our morality, our trust in each other, the delicate inner workings of our societies. A classic does more than explore the ways of our world, it exposes them, down to the nitty-gritty bare bones. These books force us to look at the world around us and truly see everything that is happening around us, not just the pretty oute...
Even though To Kill A Mockingbird was published in the 1960s, concepts from the novel can still be conveyed to a modern audience. For example, through the seemingly unimportant event of Jem inviting Walter to lunch, we too learn that one should be tolerant and understanding towards other people and not act as if you are mightier than them because they might have a different perspective from you. Modern audience can still understand the message because of the way it was presented. It is through ordinary situations like this that Lee passes on important lessons on moral righteousness and integrity.
Five teenagers who don't' know each other spend a Saturday in detention at the suburban school library. At first they squirm, fret and pick on each other. Then after sampling some marijuana, a real encounter session gets underway. The stresses and strains of adolescence have turned their inner lives into a minefield of disappointment, anger and despair.
Vonnegut powers uniformity on America in the regions of excellence, quality, and insight. He makes a world in which lovely individuals wear veils to cover their countenances and solid
For more than 300 years, immigrants from every corner of the globe have settled in America, creating the most diverse and heterogeneous nation on Earth. Though immigrants have given much to the country, their process of changing from their homeland to the new land has never been easy. To immigrate does not only mean to come and live in a country after leaving your own country, but it also means to deal with many new and unfamiliar situations, social backgrounds, cultures, and mainly with the acquisition and master of a new language. This often causes mixed emotions, frustration, awkward feelings, and other conflicts. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, the author describes the social, cultural and linguistic difficulties encountered in America as he attempts to assimilate to the American culture. Richard Rodriguez by committing himself to speaking English, he lost his cultural ties, family background and ethnic heritage.
Richard Rodriguez commences, “ Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” recounting the memory of his first day of school. A memory that will help support against the use of “family language” as the child 's primary language at school. Rodriguez is forced to say no: it 's not possible for children to use the family language at school. To support against the “family language” used at school, Rodriguez uses simple and complex sentences to help achieve the readers to understand that to only accept the family language is to be closed off by society; to not have a “public life” is to not share one 's life experiences with society. Bilingual Educators state that you would “lose a degree of ‘individuality’ if one assimilates. Rodriguez refutes this statement through his expressive use of diction and narration educing emotion from his audience building his pathos. Rodriguez also develops ethos due to the experiences he went
"In Slaughterhouse Five, -- Or the Children's Crusade, Vonnegut delivers a complete treatise on the World War II bombing of Dresden. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is a very young infantry scout* who is captured in the Battle of the Bulge and quartered in a Dresden slaughterhouse where he and other prisoners are employed in the production of a vitamin supplement for pregnant women. During the February 13, 1945, firebombing by Allied aircraft, the prisoners take shelter in an underground meat locker. When they emerge, the city has been levelled and they are forced to dig corpses out of the rubble. The story of Billy Pilgrim is the story of Kurt Vonnegut who was captured and survived the firestorm in which 135,000 German civilians perished, more than the number of deaths in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Robert Scholes sums up the theme of Slaughterhouse Five in the New York Times Book Review, writing: 'Be kind. Don't hurt. Death is coming for all of us anyway, and it is better to be Lot's wife looking back through salty eyes than the Deity that destroyed those cities of the plain in order to save them.' The reviewer concludes that 'Slaughterhouse Five is an extraordinary success. It is a book we need to read, and to reread.' "The popularity of Slaughterhouse Five is due, in part, to its timeliness; it deals with many issues that were vital to the late sixties: war, ecology, overpopulation, and consumerism. Klinkowitz, writing in Literary Subversions.New American Fiction and the Practice of Criticism, sees larger reasons for the book's success: 'Kurt Vonnegut's fiction of the 1960s is the popular artifact which may be the fairest example of American cultural change. . . . Shunned as distastefully low-brow . . . and insufficiently commercial to suit the exploitative tastes of high-power publishers, Vonnegut's fiction limped along for years on the genuinely democratic basis of family magazine and pulp paperback circulation. Then in the late 1960s, as the culture as a whole exploded, Vonnegut was able to write and publish a novel, Slaughterhouse Five, which so perfectly caught America's transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age. '"Writing in Critique, Wayne D. McGinnis comments that in Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut 'avoids framing his story in linear narration, choosing a circular structure.
Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse-Five, provided a powerful first-hand account describing the horrific events of WWII. Vonnegut recounted the events and wrote about himself through the novels protagonists, Billy Pilgrim. He was pessimistic regarding the novel because he wrote, “It is so short and jumbled and jangled, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre” (Vonnegut 22). However, on the other spectrum critics considered it to be “one of the worlds greatest antiwar books”(Vonnegut Back cover). The controversial novel was published in 1969, which was over two decades after WWII. The time it took Vonnegut to write the novel is an indication of how difficult it was for him to write about the bombings. Vonnegut does not write the novel to portray the narrator as, “John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war loving, dirty old men” (Vonnegut 14). Instead, he writes about the true chaos’s the narrator endured during his time in Dresden. Vonnegut’s novel consisted of events that reflected major societal and political movements, such as civil rights movements, and antiwar movements, within the United States during the 1960s.
His novel lets the reader get personal with Vonnegut. The novel lets readers know his thoughts on such controversial topics.He is not your typical author. He talks about topics most do not even speak about with their families in worry that it would cause a fight.The topics he covers sets him apart from every other author. He is not afraid to speak his mind, to let people know his views. Kurt Vonnegut is not afraid to be himself and that is what makes his novel so extraordinary. Vonnegut shows that he is not a religious man and does not trust the government that is claimed to be corrupt. He shows that he has lost all hope in humanity because of how much the human race has destroyed the earth. That is why on page eighty-seven he states, “So I am a man without a
Throughout his career, Kurt Vonnegut has used writing as a tool to convey penetrating messages and ominous warnings about our society. He skillfully combines vivid imagery with a distinctly satirical and anecdotal style to explore complex issues such as religion and war. Two of his most well known, and most gripping, novels that embody this subtle talent are Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five. Both books represent Vonnegut’s genius for manipulating fiction to reveal glaring, disturbing and occasionally redemptive truths about human nature. On the surface, Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five are dramatically different novels, each with its own characters, symbols, and plot. However, a close examination reveals that both contain common themes and ideas. Examining and comparing the two novels and their presentation of different themes provides a unique insight into both the novels and the author – allowing the reader to gain a fuller understanding of Vonnegut’s true meaning.
“Classic” is a term used to describe many things, such as a defining moment or a memorable book. When a book is described as a classic, it persuades new readers to discover why it is so memorable to those who have read it before them. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, is a common example of a literary classic, studied in classrooms all over the world today. Peace Like a River is a newer novel by Leif Enger, one that may very well become a classic in the future. It is an immensely profound novel that presents a new way of looking at the role of miracle in today’s lives. However, how would a novel like Peace Like a River, become a classic similar to To Kill a Mockingbird?