In his science fiction novel The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut attempts to answer the meaning of life and ultimately comes with the answer that in order "to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved." (220). However, giving such a straightforward and blunt answer obviously hints that Vonnegut's sarcasm to such a simple solution. Throughout the novel, Vonnegut ridicules religion and science simultaneously in order to come to the ultimate "answer" to the mankind's purpose of life.
The Sirens of Titan gives a great sense of direction and compactness. It is astounding in that the novel with its science fiction nature creates human warmth. Three reasons for this phenomenon present themselves. Vonnegut's skill has been developing in 7 years and the science fiction disposition offers the reader more impassiveness. Also he is more informative in this particular work. Like many other Vonnegut's books, The Sirens of Titan was influenced by Vonnegut's experiences from World War II. Although the war is not the novel's major target, it has a significant affect on it. Winston Niles Rumfoord's believes that "'everything that ever has been always will be, and everything that ever will be always has been" (20). In order to escape Dresden with a newer vision, Vonnegut cleverly attempts to rid himself of his youthful philosophy (romanticism and liberalism) by acquiring background from Rumfoord's theory of time and by isolating to define the visual problem caused by Dresden.
Vonnegut also describes the Martian Army planning a failed attack on Earth. He illustrates the soldiers on the planet as unthinking puppets forbidden by radio. In order to embed the antenna into a soldiers' intellect, one's head must be shaved and bald. Vonnegut also men tions people who are volunteers. As you can see Vonnegut's description of a soldier is quite ironic. Another significant point in the novel is Vonnegut's believe of God and other religions. He illustrates how ppl blindly and enthusiastically follow Gods and their religions and how ridiculous it is. "Boaz's home vault had a boor on it, a round boulder with which he could plug the vault's mouth" (200). For instance, he also "had slept with his door open, he would have awakened to find himself pinned down by hundreds of thousands of his admirers. They would have let him up only when his heart stopped beating" (142).
This omniscient point of view allows Vonnegut to tell the reader about events on Earth and on the alien planet of Tralfamadore at any given point in space and time giving the reader insights as to the characters’ perceptions
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...
Kurt Vonnegut said in The Vonnegut Statement (1973), in an interview with Robert Scholes, that one of his reasons for writing is "to poison minds with humanity…to encourage them to make a better world" (107). This idea works quite well in Vonnegut's book, Cat's Cradle. It is a satirical story of a man's quest to write a book about the day the world ended (refering to the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima), which he never finishes. What we get is a raw look at humans trying desperately to find a sense of purpose in their lives through different means such as religion, science, etc.
Wood, Karen and Charles. “The Vonnegut Effect: Science Fiction and Beyond.” The Vonnegut Statement. Vol. 5. 1937. 133-57. The GaleGroup. Web. 10 March. 2014.
The ultimate irony of the book is that no matter what religion you believe in, no matter what acts of goodness you perform, no matter what truth and beauty there is in small idiosyncrasies of life, nothing in the end can save everything from total ruin and pointlessness. The destruction of the world by ice-nine showed Vonnegut's tendency towards this pessimistic view of the world. No matter what any of the characters wished for or did, the world was destroyed all the same by some incredibly stupid and pointless force called fate, or God, who guided the entire human race through its futile and bloody history simply so one man could lie on the top of Mt. McCabe and commit suicide while thumbing his nose at God.
But, if facts are. inferred in the novel, like the similarity of Vonnegut to Billy Pilgrim, facts about other characters (specifically. the Tralfamadorians), and the themes and structure of the novel, another way of viewing this book can be seen that is. as an anti-war piece of writing. In fact, Vonnegut demonstrates his own antiwar sentiments throughout the novel.
One can only imagine the intense emotional scarring that one would suffer after exiting an underground shelter with a dozen other men to find a city destroyed and its people dead, corpses laying all around. These feelings are what prompted Kurt Vonnegut to write Slaughterhouse-Five as he did. The main character of this novel mirrors the author in many ways, but the striking similarity is their inability to deal with the events of Dresden on the night of February 13, 1945. Section Two- Critical Commentaries Kurt Vonnegut's work is nothing new to critics, but Slaughterhouse-Five is considered to be his best work.
Being an anti-war novel, his book is filled with shocking events and gruesome deaths. But Vonnegut portrays death as trivial. Every time someone dies or something bad happens, the reader might think " oh my gosh, that's awful!"
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.
... 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. Works Cited Barringer, Mark, and Tom Wells. “The Anti-War Movement in the United States.”
Slaughterhouse Five is not a book that should be glanced over and discarded away like a dirty rag. Slaughterhouse Five is a book that should be carefully analyzed and be seen as an inspiration to further improve the well-being of mankind. Vonnegut makes it clear that an easy way to improve mankind is to see war not as a place where legends are born, but rather, an event to be avoided. Intelligent readers and critics alike should recognize Vonnegut’s work and see to it that they make an effort to understand the complexities behind the human condition that lead us to war.
One of the most prevalent themes in Vonnegut’s works is religion. In the early pages of Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut submits his contention that "a useful religion can be founded on lies (Vonnegut, Cats Cradle 16)," meaning that, fundamentally, religion is about people, not about faith or God. Reminiscent of Karl Marx’s description of religion as the "opiate of the masses," he describes all religions as mere collections of "harmless untruths" that help people cope with their lives. The Book of Bokonon in Cat's Cradle represents this portrait of religion at both its dreariest and its most uplifting, Bokononism is contradictory, paradoxical, and founded on lies; its followers are aware of this...
In “Meaning of Life”, Richard Taylor begins with questioning the meaning of life. He mentions this is rather hard to do and decides to define what meaninglessness is in order to understand the exact opposite: meaningfulness. Taylor asks the reader to recall the famous myth of Sisyphus to come about the definition of meaninglessness. He states that Sisyphus was condemned to roll a large boulder up a hill, only to have that boulder roll back down the hill, forcing him to repeat the task forever. Despite all his efforts, his existence amounts to nothing more than endlessly repeating the same task, which itself contributes to no greater goal or purpose. This, Taylor suggests, is the very image of meaninglessness. He defines meaninglessness as the following: “Meaninglessness is essentially endless pointlessness, and meaningfulness is therefore the opposite” (270).
Kurt Vonnegut has built a universe for Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five where Billy’s cruel, unforgiving reality is contrasted by a philosophical utopia where he has learned to operate without the pains of being human. Within this self-described ‘telegraphic’ and ‘schizophrenic’ novel, Vonnegut manages to swing the reader halfway across the galaxy to a planet inhabited by a plunger-like race called the Tralfamadorians, take them into the harrowing depths of a POW camp, and show you a man who is increasingly coming undone at the seams after having lived with the psychological terrors of the Dresden bombing. He accomplishes all of this while only leaving the reader with a slight case of jet lag and hopefully a new perspective on the American
Rackstraw, Loree. “The Vonnegut Cosmos.” The North American Review 267.4 (Dec. 1982): 63-67. JSTOR. Web. 25 Sept. 2011.