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Readers who have read any of the works of Kurt

Vonnegut must have come across many things that caught their

attention. It is not only his unusual style that makes him

special in contemporary American literature. It is not only

Cheap Custom Essays on Vonnegut

the skill and various literary techniques with which he

manages to convey the main message to readers of various age

groups. It is not only the message itself which always makes

people think and discover startling facts about our world.

Looking on Vonneguts works from a holistic point of view,

a reader or a critic can see recurring themes and ideas.

Throughout this authors books, the reader can notice

a unique relationship between the created image of Humanity,

people in general, and Divinity, a divine power or God.

Humanity, in this case, seems to be in a rather peculiar

situation, unable to escape an invisible grasp that has

a hold on it. Vonnegut, through his life, novels and

stories, appears to have been looking for a way out of the

grasp, a way of making a m an free. In some books he

succeeds, in some he does not. What the way out (or the ways

out) is, is the main focus of this essay.

It cannot be very difficult to write about the themes

of one particular book by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Certainly, an

essay written on the themes of one book would not reveal

anything the reader might not notice during his own reading.

The reason for this is the fact that Vonnegut does not leave

any mysteries in his books, but with endurance explains

himself over and over again. This usually takes the wind out

of the potential critics sails. Kakutani, for example, is

irritated by this and writes th at what is most disturbing

about the novel Galapagos is

the authors tendency to repeatedly italicize the

moral of his story as in most of Mr. Vonneguts

fiction, deciphering the message is never the

readers problem, and Galapagos is obvious enough

without our having to be told, point-blank, that

Mandarax stands for the apple of knowledge or

that Captain von Kleist represents the new Adam.

(Kakutani17)

Characters, main or less important ones, tend to

reappear throughout Vonneguts work. For example Eliot

Rosewater, who appears full time in the novel God Bless

You, Mr. Rosewater, shows up to occupy a few pages of

Slaughterhouse-Five. Diana Moon Glampers playing her

important role in the story Harrison Bergeron, where she

destroys the worlds only hope of salvation, becomes

a wretched character in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Dwayne

Hoover first appears in Breakfast of Champions, then in

Deadeye Dick. Kilgore Trout, as the last example, shows up

in many novels, either as a minor or a major character

(e.g. SH5, BOC, JAI, TQK, ROS, GAL). This habit, this

tendency of reappearing characters makes Vonneguts novels

interchangeable.

It is not only characters which are interchangeable.

There are various recurring themes (predestination and

fatalism), ideas (handicapping people in order to be equal

in Harrison Bergeron and Sirens of Titan) and places

(e.g. Indianapolis, Ilium). Sale notices this when he says

that what he resists in Vonneguts books is the fact that

they

seem formulaic, made of interchangeable parts,

though this is one quality which may endear him to

others. Once Vonnegut finds what he takes to be

a successful character, motif or phrase he cant

bear to give it up, so he carries it out from novel

to novel. (Sale)

Underpants

Another thing that drives human beings is sexual

lust, Vonnegut says. He suggests that peoples inability to

control their animal drives leads the planet into doom,

mostly by means of overpopulation.

Mary Hepburn, one of the main characters in

Galapagos, describes, for example, how easily a teenage

virgin could be made pregnant by the seed of a male who was

seeking sexual release and nothing else, who did not even

like her (GAL14). In Breakfast of Champions Vonnegut

points out that most countries are in such a miserable

condition that there is no more space for people they have

nothing to eat. And still they go on having sexual

intercourse, which is, as Vonnegut reminds us, how babie

s are made. More babies were arriving all the

time--kicking and screaming, yelling for milk (BOC1-1).

With tongue in his cheek, Vonnegut shows that

babies is a wonderful way of overcoming wars, that even

after long lasting wars there still seem to be plenty of

people around (GAL). This, however, encourages many

people to think of murdering, wiping out cities etc. as

show business, as highly theatrical forms of

self-expression, and little more (GAL).

Humanity, evidently, as Kurt Vonnegut describes it,

is producing more than it can sustain, yet it is ignorant of

this fact. Just because something can reproduce, that does

not mean that it should reproduce, (HOC4) Vonnegut says.

Otherwise, Humanity could suffocate. The word locusts also

comes into mind; or Planet Gobblers, which is a short

story written by Kilgore Trout. The story was

about us, and we were the terrors of the universe.

We were sort of interplanetary termites. We would

arrive on a planet, gobble it up, and die. But

before we died, we sent out spaceships to start

tiny colonies elsewhere... (PSU0)

Humanity, however, does not realize that there is Earth only

and after it gobbles up this planet, there will be no more

food, no more planets to consume.

Big brains

Vonnegut does not only describe the drives of

Humanity, he even uncovers the source of these lusts and of

all the bad things Humanity does. In Galapagos, the source

is Humanitys imagination, destructive ideas, peoples

oversized brains. If catastrophe comes more easily to man

than courtesy and decency, Contemporary Authors suggests,

mans large brain is to blame (Contemporary Authors,4).

Can it be doubted that three kilogram brains were once

nearly fatal defects in the evolution of the human race?

(GAL8) Vonnegut asks. He asserts that the planet is

basically innocent, except for those big brains (GAL).

These brains are irresposible, unreliable, hideously

dangerous, wholly unrealistic and they are simply no damn

good (GAL5).

These brains make people lie, for example (GAL67).

They are the irresponsible generators of suggestions as to

what might be done with life (GAL78). They generate crazy

ideas in the heads of human beings who cannot help but carry

them out. Vonnegut calls this aspect of human brains

diabolical (GAL66).

They would tell their owners, in effect Here

is a crazy thing we could actually do, probably,

but we would never do it, of course. Its just fun

to think about.

And then, as though in trances, the people

would really do it--have slaves fight each other to

the Death in the Colloseum, or burn people alive in

the public square for holding opinions which were

locally unpopular, or build factories whose only

purpose was to kill people in industrial

quantities, or to blow up whole cities, and on and

on. (GAL66)

Even Kilgore Trout realizes in Breakfast of Champions

that evil is put into the world in the form of bad ideas

(BOC15). Furthermore, Vonnegut illustrates the danger of

wild ideas on the saying If wishes were horses, beggars

would ride. He shows that since people discovered tools

(and weapons, consequently) the homicidal beggars could

ride (BOC8). In simpler words, Humanitys brains managed

to make peoples wishes (crazy ideas etc.) come true.

Suicidal Tendencies

A rather common tendency that Humanity seems to have

in Vonneguts works are suicidal tendencies. How often the

reader encounters characters who die prematurely of their

own will. So often, the bad ideas in peoples brains make

them do such a horrible thing as commit suicide.

In Timequake, Vonnegut says that people are the

smartest animals on the planet, who hate being alive so

much. (TQK5) In Welcome to the Monkey House, there are

so called suicide parlors, where people can kill themselves,

or rather have themselves killed in a humane way, by a nice

woman, with a last meal, with pleasant atmosphere etc.

(WTM8-47)

A rather common manner of ending ones life is eating

Drano, a poisonous chemical normally used for cleaning

drains. Celia Hoover, the wife of one of the main characters

of Breakfast of Champions and Deadeye Dick, commits suicide

this way. (DED10) Drano appears also in Vonneguts later

books as a succesful tool of deliberate self destruction.

Vonnegut also writes that the Earth itself, Humanity itself

looked as if it were eating this chemical.

The planet itself was breaking down. It was

going to blow itself up sooner or later anyway, if

it didnt poison itself first. In a manner of

speaking, it was already eating Drano. (DED17)

Stupidity

From reading Vonnegut, one can easily conclude that

Vonnegut intends to show that people are stupid, that

Humanity as a whole is stupid, dumb and ignorant. With

several characters the writer takes it to the extreme, such

as Kimberley in the Chemistry Professor. The plays

commentary calls her scatterbrained (PSU61), but

stupidity could be the image the reader forms when reading

about her going to look up an unimportant comment in the

library, a comment that has been uttered just by the w ay,

and even more when, after a few pages, Kimberley enters

again and asks innocently Which building is the library?

(PSU68) Others, more important characters, may be seen as

stupid as well. Howard, for example, sees Billy (SH5) as

a vaguely dissatisfied dupe, and adds that he is a blank

and stupid man (Howard1). In Cats Cradle Bokonon says

that he could write a whole book, a history of human

stupidity and use it for a pillow (CAT11).

In Hocus Pocus, ignorance, conceit and dumbness show

up to be the most frequently pin-pointed problems of

Humanity. The main character, Eugene Debs Hartke, for

example, speaks about a Jack Patton who was

against everybodys reproducing, since human beings

were, in his own words, about 1,000 times dumber

and meaner than they think they are.

I myself, obviously, have finally come around

to his point of view. (HOC4)

Later, Hartke continues and says

I think that William Shakespeare was the

wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly

frank, though, thats not saying much. We are

impossibly conceited animals, and actually dumb as

a heck. Ask any teacher. You dont even have to ask

a teacher. Ask anybody. Dogs and cats are smarter

than we are. (HOC146)

He continues with the outpour of his heart and calls the

board of Trustees of Tarkington College dummies, people who

caused the war in Vietnam dummies and even himself the

biggest dummy of all (HOC146).

From the several examples shown above, it is clear

that Vonnegut does not have a very high opinion of

humankind, but rather a contemptuous one. Bryant notices

that Vonnegut cites human stupidity and the human condition

as the two chief obstacles to the achievement of the highest

good, and that it is human stupidity that leads men to

kill and cheat and steal (Bryant) .

Machines

Another quality of Humanity corresponds with the

above described stupidity. This quality is seen when

Vonnegut describes people as machines. The impulses by which

the reader forms the image of Humanity as a machine are both

direct and indirect. In Sirens of Titan Vonnegut explains

the term machine. In his opinion, to be a machine is to be

vulgar, to lack sensitivity and imagination, and to be

purposeful without a shred of conscience (TIT00). These

traits, or most of them, can be recognize d in most human

characters in Vonneguts books.

Humanitys vulgarity is obvious from perhaps

everything Vonnegut has written from how people talk and

how they act, from their animal attitude towards sexuality

etc.

Lack of sensitivity is also a very often used quality

of humans. Vonnegut demonstrates this by many ways the

previously mentioned Humanitys attitude towards sex

(lacking sesitivity altogether), human greed (people are not

stopped by anything in their chase for silver and gold) and

the omnipresent shadow of war, when people forget the value

of human life altogether and turn into homicidal imbeciles

(HOC).

That people are purposeful is also a very often

expressed quality of humans. People keep doing what they

seem to be programmed for, what they seem to be designed

for. One of these purposes is surely the already mentioned

reproduction. An example of this can be found, for example,

in Deadeye Dick

The actress playing Celia could ask why God

had even put her on Earth.

And then the voice from the back of the

theater could rumble To reproduce. Nothing else

really interests Me. All the rest is frippery.

(DED185)

Another aspect of Vonneguts novels that can hint at the

issue of purposefulness, is people being reduced into

unthinking entities by various institutions. People are

often seen as robots under orders, willing to do anything.

One of the most often described institutions is surely the

army. For example, the main character in Hocus Pocus says

that he was a professional soldier and would have killed the

returning Jesus Christ if ordered by a superior officer

(HOC). In Sirens of Titan Vonnegut describes soldiers as

people with antennae in their heads, controlled by radio to

do anything the commander chooses (TIT6).

The only exception from the traits of a machine

applied to Humanity is the lack of imagination. It cannot be

said that Vonneguts characters lack imagination. On the

contrary, human imagination is often emphasized. It is

a very important quality of Vonneguts Humanity.

This chapter has so far dealt with indirect

indications of peoples being machines. However, this trait

is also very often defined in the text directly. This direct

definition is perhaps most common in Breakfast of Champions.

One of the Kilgore Trouts books, Now It Can Be Told, says

that all people, all living things are machines and the only

entity with free will is the reader of the book (BOC17-5,

5-7). Another example is people being seen from the

viewpoint of Tralfamadorians (Vonnegu ts favorite race of

aliens). These beings see everything what happens, what

happened and what will happen, at the same time.

Lionel Merble was a machine. Tralfamadorians,

of course, say that every creature and plant in the

Universe is a machine. It amuses them that so many

Earthlings are offended by the idea of being

machines.

Outside the plane, the machine named Valencia

Merble Pilgrim was eating a Peter Paul Mound Bar

and waving bye-bye. (SH5154)

Another way of direct definition of this character trait is

considering the parts of human body to be components of

a machine. Talking about anatomy Vonnegut often uses words

like wires, motors, switches, computers etc. (e.g. BOC).

The idea of pre-programmed human being appears also in

Timequake, where Vonnegut suggests that its genes which make

us behave in this or that way (TQK118). Genes are some kind

of programming of human beings, they cannot be changed.

No-one chooses genes, they are inherited. A child gets

his/her genes at conception and has to live with them

through the rest of his/her life. This also may allude

humans to machines.

To sum up, Vonnegut argues that human beings are

robots, are machines (BOC). He both indicates this

directly and indirectly. Vonnegut also provides a formula

(defining the term machine) by which the reader can see

this by him/herself (TIT00). There is, however, one

element in the formula, into which the image of humanity

does not fit. This element is human imagination.

Family life

The last feature that needs to be discussed when

describing Vonneguts humanity is the appearance of families

in the novels. Vonneguts families seem to be undergoing

a crisis, just as everything about Humanity that has been

described so far.

People often say that family is the basis of every

state and every human society. Should family be broken, the

society would break as well. The problems would start among

the young people, but then, as they would grow up, become

the heads of their own families and have their own children,

the problems would appear among their posterity as well the

brokenness spreading from generation to generation. This is

exactly what is happening in Vonneguts writing. The family

in Vonneguts books just se ems not to work properly.

Especially the relationship between father and son often

fails to function correctly.

Kilgore Trout can be one of the examples. His three

marriages failed and his son, Leon, ran away from home when

he was sixteen. It was because I was so ashamed of him,

Leon explains the reason (GAL55). When I got to be

sixteen, though, I myself had arrived at the conclusion my

mother and the neighbors had reached so long ago that my

father was a repellent failure, ... He was an insult to life

itself... (GAL56). Kilgore Trout had a depressing

childhood, too (BOC1). Another example of not very good

relationship between father and children can be found in

Bluebeard, where the main character, Rabo Karabekian says

One might think that my two sons, Terry and

Henri Karabekian, . . ., might enjoy coming here

with their families. Terry has two sons of his own

now. Henri has a daughter..

But they do not speak to me.

So be it! So be it! I cry in this manicured

wilderness. Who gives a damn! Excuse this

outburst. (BLU6)

Deadeye Dick also shows the reader (in the

relationship between the main character and his father) that

an unsuccessful father can only produce an unsuccessful son.

In this case, the father is a painter, a failure of

a painter, actually, and the son becomes an unsuccesful

writer. The fact that parents pass a great part of

themselves on their posterity is demostrated or mentioned in

many of Vonneguts books. In Hocus Pocus, for example, the

main character says

And if I feel that my father was a horses

fundament and my mother was a horses fundament,

what can I be but another horses fundament? Ask my

kids, both legitimate and illegitimate. They know.

(HOC146)

To mention another example, the fact that Kilgore Trout was

not very successful caused the same in his son, who was

flunking every course but arts at school (GAL56).

Bluebeard shows another problem in the family members

of a family not caring about one another the husband not

caring about his wife and wife not caring about her husband.

...my Mother, who let herself become quite heavy,

and who didnt care much what her hair looked like,

either, or her clothes. Mother didnt care because

Father didnt care. (BLU14)

There are more family problems, such as divorce and

child abuse in Vonneguts books, but there is no need to

examine them in detail.

As a result of malfunctioning families, Humanity often

experiences and suffers from loneliness. Vonnegut realizes

the need for a family. Human beings are genetically such

gregarious creatures, he says. They need plenty of

like-minded friends and relatives almost as much as they

need B-complex vitamins and a heartfelt moral code

(PSU04). He uses a Christian saying One Christian is no

Christian. and changes it to One human being is no human

being. (PSU16). Wilbur Swain speaks in Slap stick with an

old lonely man

An old man crawled up to me afterwards and

told me how he used to buy life insurance and

mutual funds and household appliances and

automobiles and so on, not because he liked them or

needed them, but because the salesman seemed to

promise to be his relative, and so on.

I had no relatives and I needed relatives,

he said.

Everybody does, I said.

He told me he had been a drunk for a while,

trying to make relatives out of people in bars.

The bartender would be kind of a father, you

know- he said. And all of a sudden it was closing

time. (SLP15-16)

Vonnegut also shows that loneliness might be the reason for

the bad things in the world all the damaging excesses of

Americans in the past were motivated by loneliness rather

than a fondness for sin (SLP15).

Summing up Humanity

This part of the essay has shown the overall image of

Humanity in Vonneguts books. It has illustrated that

Humanity (as a literary character) is ugly, dirty,

funny-looking, fat and is definitely not going to win

a beauty contest (SLP51). It has been born with some of

these qualities, and the others were caused by Humanity

neglecting itself. The environment, where Humanity lives is

as miserable as its physical appearance the Earth has

turned into a cramped, neglected, dirty, smelly place.These

negative qualities are, however, strongly overpowered by

inner qualities. Humanity is seen as a machine moving

incontrollably forward, driven by several fatal lusts

(such as greed for money and wealth, ambition, sex). The

machine never stops, decency is unimportant, human lives are

unimportant. The monster moves onward, destroying

everything that gets in its way. However, the machine also

seems to be driven by a much higher force, by something

completely out of Humanitys control.

Human life and its value

Showing that people are playthings or puppets or pawns

or players also leads to the right conception of the value

of human life in Vonneguts writing. Frequent occurence of

death depicted in various ways is constantly present.

Generally speaking, there are two most remarkable views on

life and death. One of the views shows that human life is

priceless, very valuable, item of the highest importance.

The other view contradicts the first one, because it shows

that human life does not really have any value, that it can

be and often is wasted for almost any reason.

Life without price

Some works of Kurt Vonnegut show that human life does

not have a very great value or high price. This can be

concluded from several hints. In Galapagos, for example,

Vonnegut puts a star to every name of a person, who is going

to die in the following chapter. It is a rather amusing

feature at first, but later it makes the reader wonder about

the value of life, about the question whether that is all

that can be said about the loss of human life. This person

is going to die the star seems to say -- only that and

nothing more, no compassion, no feeling, nothing. The

greatest effect of using the stars with names of people

close to death is reached by using the star with Mandarax

(an amazing computer capable of doing almost everything,

from translating and interpreting all languages and quoting

famous people and famous quotations to, for example,

diagnosing a mental illness, or arranging flowers). The

computer is mentioned numerously throughout the whole book

and close to the end a star wi th the name Mandarax preceeds

its drowning in the sea. By using the same tool for both

human death and the end of Mandarax, Vonnegut appears to say

that the value of human life equals the value of a computer,

of a machine. The reader may wonder whether this example may

show that when a person dies in the book, it should evoke no

more feelings for the dying one than for a piece of

electronic equipment.

Furthermore, to stay with the novel Galapagos,

Vonnegut uses one phrase everytime somebody dies he

wasnt going to write Beethovens Ninth Symphony anyway

(e.g. GAL44-45). In this way, another view is shown and

that is the opinion that the human life is valuable as long

as the person does something important in peoples eyes for

example, write a famous symphony. Otherwise, there need to

be no tears and no emotions about a dead person, who was

just another human being, one out of many. Similar phrase as

the one about Beethovens Ninth Symphony is used in

Slaughterhouse-Five. It is much shorter but, on the other

hand, it is used much more frequently. Everytime a character

dies, Vonnegut says So it goes. The epitaph appears one

hundred and six times altogether throughout the novel. It is

no wonder death occurs so often in the novel, since the

prime topic of the book is the fire-bombing of Dresden in

World War Two. The phrase seems to suggest that it is not

a great tragedy when some body dies, that it is normal, and

does not deserve more time speaking about it than necessary.

In Deadeye Dick, when somebody dies, Vonnegut does not call

it dying. He writes that this person had their peephole

closed and when they are born, they simply have their

peephole opened. This, again, seems to show, that human

life is no more than peeping through a hole and death

means only an end to this.

In Deadeye Dick, Vonnegut calls a neutron bomb

a friendly bomb, because it destroys people and leaves all

the property untouched. (DED4) DeMott asks a difficult

question Why do human beings take satisfaction in creating

a neutron bomb that destroys only human beings, not their

accoutrements? (DeMott, 18p.1) In this example property,

houses, cars, home equipment and other valuable things

appear to be worth much more than human lives.

A rather common theme in Vonnegut is showing people

who are reduced to mere numbers, be it soldiers (such as in

Sirens of Titan), or workers (e.g. Player Piano) or anybody

else. People reduced to numbers do not have much value,

either. In the story The Lie (WTM-6) Vonnegut shows

a young boy, Eli Remenzel, who is supposed to go to a very

prestigeous school, only because all the Remenzels in

history went there. On the way there, his mother counts all

his predecessors and finds out that Eli is actually number

thirty-one. His feelings do not matter, his wishes, his

fears do not matter. The only thing that matters is that he

is number thirty-one. The theme can be found in other works

as well, for example Sirens of Titan, Hocus Pocus, or Player

Piano. In Harrison Bergeron this theme can be recognized

as well. Vonnegut shows the readers a society where everyone

is completely equal, equal even in things as absurd as body

weight or intelligence or how one looks like. This, however,

redu ces the human being into a mere number, too. The person

loses his individual features, ceases to be special any

more. The people in Harrison Bergeron, through acquiring

equality, reach uniformity and deformity of self instead.

To go further from showing unimportance of human

beings as individuals, it can be said that the same view is

taken for humankind in general, for Humanity. The novel

Galapagos demonstrates this very apparently. There is an

apocalypse and only a few people survive on the Galapagos

Islands. However, evolution does its work with this remnant

of humanity and people evolve into different kind of

species, a species with flippers instead of hands and

a brain that is much smaller and much less capable. Again,

there is no feeling or compassion for the lost species. It

seems that the world is better off without people, at least

people as we know them. It seems that the phrase He wasnt

going to write Beethovens Ninth Symphony anyway can be

applied here, too, meaning that the same way people are

unimportant and there is nothing special about them,

Humanity is unimportant and there is nothing special about

it, either.

The only thing that matters human life

The previous section has shown that humanity appears

to be disposable. However, this cynicism is not shared

everywhere in Vonneguts work. On the contrary, there

appears another view which shows the value of human life in

a different light.

In Timequake, when Kilgore Trout observes dead and

dying people, a completely different attitude to human death

is seen. While the epitaph he was not going to write

Beethovens Ninth Symphony anyway could be inscribed

emotionlessly upon the grave of humanity in other novels,

Kilgore Trout does not share this

The dead and dying were widely scattered, rather

than heaped or enclosed in a burning or crumpled

airplane or bus. They were still individuals. Alive

or dead, they still had personalities, with stories

to read in their faces and clothes. (TQK110)

This humane view of dead people seems to be a rarity in

Vonneguts books.

In the apocalyptic novel Cats Cradle, there are many

other clues that can lead to the discovery that human life

is valuable. For Bokonists, there is one thing that matters,

one sacred thing. It is not even God, there is just one

thing. The answer to what it is, is neither the ocean, nor

the sun. Its Man ... Thats all. Just man (CAT14). For

example, when a Bokonist is about to commit suicide, he

always says Now I will destroy the whole world

(CAT160). Todd calls this kind of mora lism vague, so

undemanding, a dreamily humanist nihilism... (Todd107).

Bryant finds more truth and maybe the foundation about

the human worth in Vonneguts writing

Human worth -- and hence significance --

resides in the being of the human.The self is its

own reason for being its being is its own

guarantee of its value. (Bryant0)

Vonnegut, showing Humanity in the worst light possible, over

and over again describes that human lives are precious and

valuable in themselves. People do not need to prove to be

worthy, their worth is there no matter what kind of person

they happen to be. Vonnegut depicts ususally broken down

people, criminals, failures etc., while still showing the

fact that their value is great, beyond measurement.

Bugs in Amber

The lack of free will is a common feature in most of

Vonneguts books. In Slaughterhouse-Five, for example

Vonnegut introduces the phrase bugs in amber. One of the

examples is the passage which shows (from the view of the

Tralfamadorians) that the future is given and that one

cannot change it.

All moments, past, present, and future, always

have existed, always will exist. The

Tralfamadorians can look at all the different

moments just the way we can look at a stretch of

the Rocky Mountains, for instance. (SH57)

Another passage of the novel describes the theme more

directly. It is the part when the Tralfamadorians kidnap

Billy Pilgrim and he asks why?.

Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?

Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in

the amber of this moment. There is no why.

(SH576-77)

This concept views the world as a kind of amber and

everything in the world as a bug trapped in it, unable to

control what it is doing, having no free will at all.

Humanity, according to this, cannot help what it is doing.

Thus Bokonon and Jonah in Cats Cradle can sing a Bokonist

tune

We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodley do, What we

must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must;

Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, muddily do,

Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily

bust. (CAT178)

Timequake, Vonneguts latest novel, deals with free will, or

the lack of it, very directly, too. In the story, there is

a timequake that causes the time to go back ten years.

Everything the people went through during the ten years,

they have to go through again, without any chance of

changing things. Vonnegut calls it a rerun (e.g. TQK1)

or an automatic pilot (e.g. TQK1). Just like a pilot

who has no control over a plane that is flown on an

automatic pilot, the characters and whole Humanit y has no

way of controling what is going to happen next.

The structure of Vonneguts novels itself reveals the

fact that everything is set and the characters have no way

of changing the storyline. The plot is usually revealed in

the first couple of chapters (e.g. GAL, SH5, HOC, BOC etc.),

the reader almost always knows what is going to happen next.

The narrator often occupies a vantage point for observing

the whole story. In Slaughterhouse-Five, for instance, it is

the view of Tralfamadorians who see in the fourth dimension,

therefore see everything that has happened and that will

happen. In Galapagos it is the viewpoint of a ghost

narrating the story a million years after it actually

happened, therefore seeing it from a very similar point to

the Tralfamadorians?.

If there is a puppet which is actually doing

something, there also must be a puppet master. It is

difficult to recognize the puppet master, though. The

enormous force (SH5164), the source of all acts of

Humanity differs from book to book. In Galapagos it is the

peoples big brains. In some other books (e.g. HOC, BOC,

DED), it is chemicals or fault in the construction of the

human being

It is a big temptation to me, when I create

a character for a novel, to say that he is what he

is because of faulty wiring, or because of

microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or

failed to eat on that particular day. (BOC4)

Some of the most gruesome accidents, says Vonnegut, were

caused by people who had rendered themselves imbecillic or

maniacal because by ingesting too much of what, if taken in

moderation, could be a helpful chemical (HOC8). Wilbur

Swains mother, in Slapstick, is described as a symphony of

chemical reactions (SLP58). In some novels the source is

the sexual drive or other physical needs. The key word is

probably the word physical. Vonnegut often sees the fault

in the body. In Bluebeard, for example, that fault is seen

in the meat I would hate to be responsible for what my

meat does. When people do something terrible, it is the

meats fault (BLU46).

On the other hand, in Breakfast of Champions Vonnegut

muses about the idea of God being the cause. He uses

a parallel the destructive testing division at the

Pontiac Division of General Motors, where

various parts of automobiles and even entire

automobiles were destroyed. Pontiac scientists set

upholstery on fire, threw gravel at windshields,

snapped crankshafts and driveshafts, staged

head-on collisions, tore gearshift levers out by

the roots, ran engines at high speeds with almost

no lubrication, opened and closed glove compartment

doors a hundred times a minute for days, cooled

dashboard clocks to within a few degrees of

absolute zero, and so on.

Everything youre not supposed to do to a car,

they did to a car. (BOC165-166)

Vonnegut wonders if this is the reason what God put people

on earth for, whether it was to test them and find out how

much they can stand without breaking (BOC166). From the

novel it seems that he thinks that this is, obviously, the

reason.

In Galapagos, he says that people are natures

experiments (GAL8), which corresponds with the above

view, only with one difference that Vonnegut uses the word

nature instead of God. However, it can be assumed, that

he has one entity in mind, since both, nature and God can

take up the role of, or be seen as, the Creator of the

Universe, of the world, of the human beings.

After all, Vonnegut seems to imply, God is the creator

of the meat and the designer of the big brain, both of

which a human being cannot control, both of which a human

being is subject to. Another clue of God being the source

can be seen If God created the whole reality, then it is

the maker of the amber as well. What are people predestined

to do must have been predestined by God, the creator.

Whatever or whoever the puppet master might be, it

will hence be called Divinity, as a counterpart to Humanity.

Humanity versus Divinity

Humanity does not conquer Divinity physically. It

cannot do it. It is not capable of being set free from the

bonds that Divinity set on it. However, Vonneguts Humanity

does manage to outwit Divinity. Even though it is physically

impossible to be set free, Humanity manages to liberate

itself. One aspect did not really fit the definition of

a machine (as was shown in the section on Humanity) and it

is crucial in this moment human imagination. It is

something that is not under Divinitys control. It is

something people are free to use at any time, at times when

they are otherwise controlled by the enormous forces.

Bryant points out that Vonneguts Humanity is a complex

combination of nobility and meanness, knowledge and

ignorance, grandeur and ignomity (Bryant). It is

a complex of good and bad qualities. The bad qualities

(meanness, ignorance and ignomity) can be ascribed to

Divinity, because Humanity cannot be blamed for them. It is

not able to suppress them. If one scratches out the bad

qualities (which are mostly in majority), the good ones will

remain. Benjamin DeMott complains that Vonneguts Humanity

serves evil too openly and good too secretly (DeMott

1710). The outside of Humanity is controlled by Divinity,

the villain, therefore Humanity appears to be evil. What

happens inside Humanity is whats beyond the villains

power. Thats what makes Humanity a good character. It does

serve good above all things. Evil things are beyond its

control.

The novel Bluebeard emphasizes the difference between

meat and soul. My soul knows my meat is doing bad

things (BLU46). Soul is good. Meat is evil. The story

Unready to Wear, which was written as early as 151, also

points at this distinct parts of a human being The mind is

the only thing worth anything (WTM40). [The body] brings

out the worst in us, no matter how good our psyches are

(WTM4). The minute you get in [the body], chemicals take

over (WTM44). Kilgore Trout in Breakfast of Champions

also agrees with this Our awareness is all that is alive

and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is

dead machinery (BOC1). Vonnegut, indeed manages to make

the awareness a sacred component of a human being. If people

did not possess it, they would really be simple machines or

puppets.

On meaning and purpose of life

Most of Vonneguts novels deal with the meaning of

life, seeking its purpose. Ranly says that Vonnegut employs

only a scientific, mechanistic meaning for purpose and fails

to find a reasonable purpose in either the universe or in

man (Ranly11). Humans, therefore find a meaning in

themselves. If they seem to have been created for some

pathetic reason, they can surely invent a purpose inside

them. The main character of Sirens of Titan discovers this

kind of answer at the end of the novel It took us that

long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who

is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved

(TIT0). Samuels notices this as well life passes human

understanding but not our powers of enjoyment

(Samuels1). It is this alternative that can be found in

the heart of Humanity that is the means by which it outwits

Divinity. If Divinity wants to write about somebody who

suffers all the time (BOC41), Humanitys only way of

winning is not to suffer.

This chapter has shown that there are no real villains

or heroes in Vonneguts books. These characters can be found

only when Humanity and Divinity are considered to be

literary characters. Humanity was proved not to be the

villain, despite all the vile things it does. It is led into

doing them by Divinity and that is why Divinity is the

villain. Humanity, however, could not be considered to be

the hero if there was no additional aspect of its character

to being the puppet. This aspect has bee n found in

Humanitys awareness, its imagination, the capability of

discovering its own answers. This becomes a way for

outwitting Divinity, a way of winning over it. Therefore,

Humanity can be considered to be the hero.

Kilgore Trout - Vonnegut in the Mirror

Kilgore Trout is a character that appears in

Vonneguts books more frequently than any other. While

playing a minor part in, for example, God Bless You, Mr.

Rosewater or Galapagos, being only mentioned in several

others, such as Jailbird or Hocus Pocus, he appears as the

major character in two other books Breakfast of Champions

and Timequake. He is a writer, like Kurt Vonnegut. Trouts

person, however, is rather obscure. There are many details

about his life mentioned throughout these books, but the

bits and pieces of information often contradict one another.

For example, Breakfast of Champions says that he died in

18. In Timequake, he is still alive in 001 and, as

Vonnegut says, dies that year. (TQKxiii). While in some

novels, he is an unknown writer, in others, he is

a distinguished writer and scientist who has even been

awarded the Nobel Prize (BOC16,5). However, a short

biography can be put together from the pieces of information

available, with the omission of the contradicti ng parts,

however.

He was born in a family of ornithologists and spent

his childhood in Bermuda. It was depressing (BOC1). He

started writing when he was fourteen years old, but no

distinguished publisher would publish his stories or books.

His prose was usually published in trash and pornographic

magazines only (e.g. The Black Garterbelt), fulfilling the

sole function of a filler between obscene pictures and

photos. The text had nothing to do with the pictures,

though. His paperback novels, when they managed to find

a publisher, were failures and usually served as

a shop-window dressing only. His readership was really

small; people who bought the pornographic magazines were not

interested in the text anyway and not many people bought the

paperbacks, either. He had only a few fans. One of the most

devoted ones was definitely Eliot Rosewater (SH5, ROS).

Another avid fan (SH5168) is Billy Pilgrim, who has read

dozens of books by Trout. (SH5166) Despite the low

popularity, he was very fruitful, having written 117 novels

and about 000 short stories (by the time of the action of

Breakfast of Champions).

His family life was sad. His numerous mariages did not

work out and his son, Leon, ran away from home when he was

sixteen. He lived alone in his rented apartment in Illium.

Another known place of residence was an aparment in Cohoes,

NY, where he lived with his parakeet, Cyclone Bill, only. In

order to get money (which he ususally did not get from his

writing career) he did various jobs. He worked as an

installer of aluminous combination storm windows and

screens. (BOC0), he was a stock clerk in a trading stamp

redemption center (ROS1). In Slaughterhouse-Five, his job

was a circulation man for the Illium Gazette where he

managed newspaper delivery boys, bullied and flattered and

cheated little kids (SH5166). Giving freedom to his

parakeet in 175 and having learned of his sons death, he

becomes a vagabond (TQK). However, at the end of his life,

the odds seem to work for him. He even receives the nobel

prize. (BOC5) and even his jokes start to be taken

seriously. (BOC1)

There are many reasons why a reader can draw

a conclusion that Vonnegut and Trout have a lot in common

and that, probably, when talking about Trout, Vonnegut talks

about himself. Various critics have come to this conclusion,

even before Vonnegut admitted himself that Trout has been

his alter ego (TQKxiii). Lundquist, for example, has used

this term, alter ego, for Kilgore Trout as early as 177

(Lundquist41).

The things that are similar between Trout and Vonnegut

are many. One thing is their writing. Their stories, or

novels, often have the same themes or the same characters.

To mention several examples, one story that is very similar

is Trouts novel BR0TB (ROS1-1) and Vonneguts short

story Welcome to the Monkey House. In both, the reader can

find the idea of Ethical Suicide Parlors, where people can

have themselves killed legally and humanely. The two places

are described almost identically. Another thing Trout and

Vonnegut have in common is the planet Tralfamadore and

aliens called Tralfamadorians. It is the planet where Billy

Pilgrim (SH5) is taken to when kidnapped by UFOs. This

planet appears also in Sirens of Titan. It appears in

several of Trouts stories, for example Protocols of the

Elders of Tralfamadore (HOC). Even though the accounts of

Tralfamadore and Tralfamadorians differ slightly both in

Trouts stories and in Vonneguts books, it is an element

the two writers have in common.

Many of the novels of Kilgore Trout have similar

themes as Vonneguts and attack the same things over and

over again, such as automation, free will, religion, human

stupidity, greed and obsession with money, sexual lust etc.

Many of Trouts stories appear throughout Vonneguts books,

usually stripped so that the readers can read the plot of

the story condensed into one paragraph. One, and definitely

not only, example can be the story about a money tree

Trout, incidentally, had written a book about

a money tree. It had twenty dollar bills for

leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its

fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who

killed each other around the roots and made very

good fertilizer. (SH5167)

Another parallel between Trout and Vonnegut can be

seen in the publishers of their stories and books. Vonnegut,

too, was first published in various magazines. Welcome to

the Monkey House, for example, appeared in Playboy. Others

include The Atlantic Monthly, Colliers Magazine,

Cosmopolitan, Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, Ladies

Home Journal, The New York Times, Saturday Evening Post,

Venture etc. His first books appeared in paperback only.

In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, the reader can find

the description of Trouts favorite formula for writing

stories

Trouts favorite formula was to describe

a perfectly hideous society, not unlike his own,

and then, toward the end, to suggest ways in which

it could be improved. (ROS0)

This is the very formula that Vonnegut himself is using in

his fiction, as has already been described.

In the biography of these two people, there are also

several suprising coincidences. For example, Vonnegut, just

like Trout, probably started writing at an early age. In

16, Vonnegut, when at High School, was one of the

publishers of a school magazine, Shortridge Daily Echo

(Zelenka15). He was fourteen when he started attending the

school, just as Trout was fourteen when he started writing.

His first short story, Report on the Barnhouse Effect,

however, was published another fourteen years later, at the

age of twenty-eight. Some places are also common both for

Trout and Vonnegut especially Cape Cod.

Trout can really be seen as Vonneguts fictional

counterpart, a parody of Vonnegut or Vonneguts mirror

image. Beorgettz notes that Trout is also a representation

of what Vonnegut himself might become. (Beorgettzchapter

1) This is one of the reasons why the reader can consider

Vonneguts fiction to be more autobiography than fiction.

Billy Pilgrim and other autobiographical characters

Kilgore Trout is not the only literary character that

seems to carry Vonneguts image. In his writing, the reader

can find more characters that could be called

autobiographical characters.

Billy Pilgrim is probably the most obvious of the

characters that reflects Vonnegut himself. Billy Pilgrim

re-lives the hell of the fire-storming of Dresden in 145,

an event that probably had the greatest impact on Vonnegut

and his writing. Apart from the identical events that Billy

and Vonnegut experience (the war, being prisoners-of-war,

work in Dresden and the actual bombing), Vonnegut prompts

two other hints that leave no doubt that Vonnegut equals

Billy Pilgrim That was I. That was me. That was the author

of this book, (SH515, 148) Vonnegut writes.

Another of Vonneguts characters that could be

connected with the writer himself by the mark equals is

Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain in Slapstick. Without the fact that

Vonnegut said himself in the prologue that Slapstick is

rather an autobiography, the readers would hardly be able to

see the autobiographical elements themselves. Having read

this before the novel starts makes them constantly wonder at

the things depicted in the story. Vonnegut says this about

the novel It depicts myself and my beautiful sister as

monsters. (SLP4) His sister, Alice, was embarassingly

tall, and died of cancer (Nicol10) and even though the

setting is all fictional, it is about Alice and Kurt. The

book is about what life feels like to Vonnegut

(Nicol10). It is also an experiment with old age

(SLP5) which Vonnegut started to enter (he was fifty-four

when Slapstick was published.)

Kilgore Trout co-stars in Breakfast of Champions

with Dwayne Hoover. The latter is also much like Vonnegut.

Hoover has a dog, Sparky, and loves to get down on the floor

and roll around with him and speak to him (BOC17-18). In

the prologue to Slapstick, Vonnegut says that this is his

own love, too

I used to spend a lot of time rolling around on

rugs with uncritically affectionate dogs we had.

And I still do a lot of that. The dogs become

tired and confused and embarassed long before I do.

I could go on forever. (SLP1)

This is one connecting thing that connects Hoover with

Vonnegut. Another of the connecting things is Dwaynes job

a car salesman. Vonnegut himself was a Saab dealer in

154-56 (Zelenka160).

David Potter in Deer in the Works also reminds

a reader of Kurt Vonnegut. The story probably is about

Vonnegut. Potter comes to the Illium Works to apply for

a job as a writer in advertising and sales promotion

(WTM07). He also owns a weekly paper in Dorset. Vonnegut

himself was working as a publicist in General Electric

Company in Schenectady, N.Y. Feeling trapped, like Potter

and the deer, he left in 151 and became a full-time writer

(Zelenka160).

Rudy Watz is also a reflection of Vonnegut, as he says

in the preface of Deadeye Dick (DEDxiii)

The neutered pharmacist who tells the tale is my

declining sexuality. The crime he commited in

childhood is all the bad things I have done.

(DEDxiii)

Not only from these, but from other characters of

Vonneguts can the reader conclude that Vonnegut often

writes about himself. It is also the usual first person

narrative Vonnegut mostly uses. Slapstick, for example, is

an autobiography of Wilbur Swain, therefore written in first

person. In Hocus Pocus, Eugene Debs Hartke writes about his

life on bits of paper, and again, there is the first person

narrative. Bluebeard is another autobiography, this time of

Rabo Karabekian. Jailbird is another. Palm Sunday and Fates

Worse than Death have the subtitle An Autobiographical

Collage, yet the style and the narrative does not differ

much from Vonneguts other novels that could be named

fiction, Timequake, for example. The narrative helps to

persuade the reader that Vonnegut, by talking about other

people, talks about himself. That is why it appears to be so

attractive and natural for Vonnegut to choose the first

person narrative in majority of his books, especially the

later ones.

Further, the personal prefaces and prologues to his

books usually contain the same devices as the actual novel.

For example, in the prologue to Slapstick, Vonnegut uses the

same senile hiccup hi ho just as throughout the whole

book (SLP1,16,17,1,5). Chapter oneof

Slaughterhouse-Five, being an introduction, uses for example

the recurrent phrase So it goes (SH51). The frequency of

and-so-ons and et-ceteras and other similar phrases

Vonnegut uses in his fiction is also something th at

connects the actual story with the personal note in the

beginning.

Autobiographical Places

Vonnegut writes about many places, but many of them

are actual places, where Vonnegut lived or worked.

Indianapolis can be one of them. Many events of Vonneguts

writing are set in Indiana, or the capital itself. Cape Cod

appears in many books, too (CAT, ROS, SH5 etc.) and it is

actually where Vonnegut has lived as well (TQKxi). To name

a few more, Schenectady and New York appear in his books

frequently, too, and these two places are also where he has

lived.

Bergoettz, Glenn; Autobiography and Philosophy in the

Personal Novels of Kurt Vonnegut 168-17 in Kurt

Vonnegut Corner Online, 18

URLhttp//www.geocities.com/Hollywood/45/kv_autobio.html

(Apr , 001)

Bryant, Jerry H., The Open Decision; The Free Press, 170

Contemporary Authors, 4, Gale Reserach, Detroit, MI

DeMott, Benjamin; Vonneguts Otherworld by Laughter,

Saturday Review; May 1, 171

DeMott, Benjamin; A Riot of Randomness, The New York Times

Book Review, The New York Times Company October 17, 18

Goldsmith, David H.; Kurt Vonnegut Fantasist of Fire and

Ice; Bowling Green University Popular Press, 17

Howard, Maureen; book review, Partisan Review, No. 1, 170

Huber, Chris; The Vonnegut Web online, Durham, NC 18 URL

http//www.duke.edu/~crh4/vonnegut/ ( Apr 001)

Jarab, Josef; Vehlasny prozaik z popartoveho plakatu, in

Czech edition of Breakfast of Champions; Praha

Kakutani, Michiko; book review, The New York Times Book

Review; The New York Times Company Lake City Final Edition,

Section C; September 5, 185

Leonard, John, book review, The New York Times, The New York

Times Company September 7, 17

Lessing, Doris; Vonneguts Responsibility, The New York

Times Book Review; The New York Times Company February 4,

17

Lewis, C.S.; God in the Dock, in God in the Dock; London

Harper Collins Religions

Lifton, Robert Jay; Survivor as Creator, American Poetry

Review; January-February, 17

Lundquist, James; Kurt Vonnegut; New York Frederick Ungar

Publishing Co., 177

May, John R.; Vonneguts Humor and the Limits of Hope,

Twentieth Century Literature, January 17

Nelson, Joyce, Vonnegut and Bugs in Amber, Journal of

Popular Culture, Winter, 17

Novotny, Adolf; Biblicky Slovnik (Bible Dictionary), Praha

Kalich - Ceska biblicka spolecnost, 1

Nicol, Charles; Kiss Me, Im senile, National Review; New

York, National Review Inc., November 6, 176

Olderman, Raymond M.; Out of the Waste Land and into the

Fire Catalysm or the Cosmic Cool, Beyond the Waste Land

A Study of the American Novel in the Nineteen-Sixties; Yale

University Press, 17

Ranly, Ernest W.; What Are People For?, Commonwealth;

Commonwealth Publishing Co., May 7, 171

Reed, Peter J.; Kurt Vonnegut Jr.; Warner Paperback Library,

17

Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith; Narrative Fiction Contemporary

Poetics; London New Accents, 18

Sale, Roger, book review, The New York Times Book Review;

The New York Times Company October , 176

Samuels, Charles Thomas; Age of Vonnegut, The New

Republic; June 1, 171

Scholes, Robert, book review, The New York Times Book

Review; The New York Times Company Apr 6, 16

Todd, Richard; book review, The Atlantic Monthly; Boston,

Mass.May 17

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