Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is a contemporary American author whose works have been described by Richard Giannone as "comic masks covering the tragic farce that is our contemporary life" (Draper, 3784). Vonnegut's life has had a number of significant influences on his works. Influences from his personal philosophy, his life and experiences, and his family are evident elements in his works. Among his "comic masks" are three novels: Cat's Cradle, The Sirens of Titan, and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Throughout these novels, elements such as attitude, detail, narrative technique, setting, and theme can be viewed with more understanding when related to certain aspects of his life. These correlations are best examined in terms of each influence.
One of the most significant influences from Vonnegut's life on his personal philosophy has been his participation in World War II. During the war, Vonnegut served in the American army in Europe and was captured by German soldiers. As a prisoner of war, he witnessed the Allied bombing of the city of Dresden, in which more than 135,000 people died due to the resulting fires (Draper, 3785). This experience had a profound impact on Vonnegut. From it, he developed his existential personal philosophy and his ideas about the evils of technology. He states, "I am the enemy of all technological progress that threatens mankind" (Nuwer, 39). The influence of Dresden shows up in each of the novels.
In Cat's Cradle, one element of his experience at Dresden that Vonnegut portrays is his fear of technology. Initially, the intention of the story is for the narrator to write about what the scientists who invented the atomic bomb were doing the day it was dropped on Hiroshima. To this effect, one of the scientists in the story said, "Science has now known sin," to which another replied, "What is sin?" (Vonnegut, Cradle, 21). The focus on technology quickly changes to a material called ice-nine, which has the ability to freeze water at room temperature. This technological breakthrough, by a scientist who worked on developing the atomic bomb, has the ability to destroy the world by freezing all its water. Even though the people with ice-nine are very careful all through the plot, they lose control of it in the end and the world becomes frozen. With ice-nine, Vonnegut thematically demonstrates how relatively simple technolog...
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Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. New York. Dell Publishing Co., Inc. 1965.
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Most literary scholars accredit Kurt Vonnegut’s literary voice as a style of dark comedy or humor to tell the stories in his writing that are typically horrific and macabre. According to Smith (2014), “In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut embellishes the scope of black humor by incorporating irony and by using vocabulary that creates a mock-serious tone, often leading to absurdity”. Arguably Vonnegut’s most famous novel and where most scholars agree Vonnegut’s literary voice is most prominent is in Slaughterhouse-five. An example of Vonnegut’s dark humor is a scene in which American prisoners
Kurt Vonnegut writes pessimistic novels, or at least he did back in the sixties. Between Slaughterhouse Five, Mother Night, and Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut paints a cynical and satirical picture of the degradation of society using distortion as the primary means to express himself. In Cat's Cradle, the reader is confronted with the story of the narrator, John, as he attempts to gather material to write a book on the human aspect of the day Japan was bombed. As the story progresses, he finds that becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish reality from illusion. He meets up with a midget, a dictator, and a nation's object of lust as his journey progresses, and he eventually ends up the sole leader of a remote island and witnesses the end of the world. Using implausible stories and unbelievable characters and situations to convey his message, Vonnegut's utilization of literary distortion allows him to move the reader and prove his point in a far greater way than he could by just blatantly shouting his opinions. "Anyone unable to understand how useful a religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either"(16), states the narrator, concerning Cat's Cradle. Throughout the text, Vonnegut uses the religion of Bokononism, which is a fictitious faith founded on the basis of deception, to establish that people can prosper and be happy under false beliefs. When two men founded the island nation of San Lorenzo, Cat's Cradle's model for society, it was...
New York: G.P. Putnam's, 1997. Vit, Marek. Kurt Vonnegut Corner: Kurt Vonnegut Essay Collection. http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/4953/kv_essays.html
Kurt Vonnegut places his experiences and his views in the text. He begins the book by stating, “All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true...I’ve changed all of the names.” Viewing war as a sen...
The answer lies within the book and within the man himself. Kurt Vonnegut served in the Armed Forces during World War II and was captured during The Battle of the Bulge. He and a group of American Prisoners of War were taken to Dresden to take part in a prisoner work camp. Vonnegut and his fellow soldiers were housed in an underground facility when Dresden became history as the most loss of human life at one time. On the night of February 13, 1945, when the Americans were underground, Dresden was firebombed by the Allied Air Force.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Harrison Bergeron. New York: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 1961. Print
Like a dream filled with complex characters and situations which one is compelled to discuss and analyze the next day, Vonnegut uses dark humor to penetrate his reader's world. The Cornell medical student whom the narrator, Jonah, first interviews by mail turns out to be a midget. The brilliant nuclear physicist, the father of the atom bomb, is infantile. Writers and college professors are essential to human existence, and Boko-maru is a form of love that can happen anytime, anywhere, and with anyone.
But what really forces Vonnegut to impose his presence on the text is his complete inability to remove himself at all from the act of communication at the core of any work of literature. He revels in that involvement. He has mentioned his desire, what he implies is a universal need of all human beings, for some "soul-deep fun." He uses this term as a synonym for greatness. And this has lead to some nasty comments in fiction workshops about stories that I've written: complaints of flat characters, cartoonish plotlines, non-directed criticism, overall pessimism and over-sentimentality for all things lowbrow. Needless to say, sometimes I feel, to varying degrees of pretension, like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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.
Vonnegut believes that writers can influence people's ideas profoundly. In one of his many speeches he stated the following:
The danger and the risk that comes with enforcing something, like total equality, is an idea Vonnegut presents as a picture-perfect proposition not worth striving for. Peter Reed, author of The Short Fiction of Kurt Vonnegut claims the time era in which Vonnegut wrote Harrison Bergeron was the time of the cold war,
Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle I believe that Vonnegut uses Cat's Cradle as an allegorical tale about what will happen to the world if we are not careful with technology that has the ability to end life on this planet. He points out one of the qualities of humanity: that people make mistakes, thus poisoning our minds and encouraging a better world. One of the obvious ways that Vonnegut uses this book to "encourage a better world" would be by showing that the end of the world may come from an accidental release of technology. At the time when this book was written, nuclear war seemed to be almost a certainty.
...ities from WWII in his experiences at Dresden. Vonnegut’s writing is unique because “the narrator offers a very different kind of war story—one which combines fact and fiction” (Jarvis 98). With the combination of fact and fiction, Vonnegut successfully connected events from WWII to the political references and societal conflicts during the Vietnam War.
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.
Harris, Charles B. "Time, Uncertainty, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: A Reading of Slaughterhouse-Five." The Centennial Review 3rd ser. 20 (1976): 228-42. Web.