Breakfast of Champions as Social Commentary Essay

Kurt Vonnegut wrote during the postmodern literary period which breaks free from many ideas created in the modern period and describes the literature that follows World War two. This period is characterised with the technology becoming part of life,paradox,and fragmentation. Authors also hold true the idea that all stories have already been told and works of this era are new methods of telling them.(Klages np) These techniques are used throughout the short stories of Vonnegut’s “Welcome to the Monkey House” and influence can be seen due to his past in the military which may be seen through his storytelling.

It is a perfect example because the story takes place in an environment of integral conformity and describes a scene of pure deviance where Vonnegut’s disseminated strong messages. By analyzing Vonnegut’s short story with the help of both “The social animal” by Eliott Aronson and “Wayward Puritans” by Kai T. Erikson we will point all the wrong aspects of perfect conformity in a first paragraph. And, in a second paragraph, we will discuss more about the importance of deviance by analyzing the last scene.

     John Hughes’ 1985 film, The Breakfast Club, gives countless examples of the principles of interpersonal communication. Five high school students: Allison, a weirdo, Brian, a nerd, John, a criminal, Claire, a prom queen, and Andrew, a jock, are forced to spend the day in Saturday detention. By the end of the day, they find that they have more in common than they ever realized.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is one of the most well known World War II authors. His humble beginnings and early life misfortunes shaped not only his writings, but also his view of the world. His imprisonment in Dresden in World War II, however, formed his opinions about war at an early age and later inspired many of his works and style of writing. After the returning from World War II, Vonnegut voiced his sentiments through his writing that war was wasteful and uncivilized. Vonnegut developed a unique blend of sadness, satire, and simplicity, along with his ability to understand the audience, which made his novels comprehensible and inspirational to any

Koons starts off the intro of her satirical essay by using sarcasm and rhetorical in order to show the audience what is happening with the world at that time and establish the satire of her essay. In the first sentence, Koons claims that robots are better than humans, as they are humans “favorite things”, suggesting that the humans basically created their own “better” version. Koons utilizes a rhetorical question to ask why humans “are still there”, showcasing the dispensability and non-necessity of humans when robots are present. By doing so, Koons demonstrates that humans have, in a way, become the cause of their own downfall.

The short stories; “All the Troubles of the World” by Isaac Asimov and “I Am...Am I” by Drew Hayden Taylor, have many similarities and differences. “All the Troubles” is about an artificial intelligence named Multivac. Multivac contains all the information about the earth’s inhabitants and eventually has enough of all the troubles of the world. The short story “I Am...Am I” is about two computer scientists who have created an artificial intelligence. The AI evolved faster than they expected and decides it does not want to be apart of humanity. The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast both of the short story’s point of views, characters and literary devices to help develop a theme for their stories.

Since the last time I wrote a journal, I had just finished Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Now, I started and finished Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and also started Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. There are still sixty-six pages remaining in the novel. Fahrenheit 451 is about a man named Guy Montag living in a future in which books are outlawed. Guy is a fireman whose job it is to burn all remaining books currently located in his city. However, when Guy meets a strange girl living outside of his apartment, he becomes intrigued with what books have the power to do. Instead of following orders, Guy starts wondering why he is doing what he is told to do rather than just doing what he is told. Breakfast of Champions is a science fiction novel describing the lives of two strange men. One of these men is Kilgore Trout, an unheard of novelist who will soon become one of the most famous men in America. The other man in this story is Dwayne Hoover, a wealthy man who made his fortune off of speculation on the stock market. Despite his luxurious home and fantastic job, Dwayne will soon be appalled by Kilgore Trout’s idea that everyone around Dwayne is a robot. In both of these novels, change is an essential theme. In Fahrenheit 451, focus will be brought on the change of the world in which Guy resides, and also the change of Guy as a person, while in Breakfast of Champions, the focus of change is how much America has changed since 1973.

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

Hattenhauer is the associate professor of American Literature at Arizona State University West. In his above article, Hattenhauer discusses the use of satire in Vonnegut's story, Harrison Bergeron as used to portray the concept of true equality as being absurd and unachievable.

Sociologists use many different theoretical perspectives to study the behavior of people in society. According to Macionis, sociology uses both a micro-level and macro-levels to look at both the big picture and the smallest details (p.17). There are three major analytical models in sociology that include functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interaction. Both functionalism and conflict theory are macro-level and symbolic interaction is micro-level (Macionis, P.19). Each one looks at society in a different way and can in this paper I will analyze the movie “The Breakfast Club” using these perspectives.

Kurt Vonnegut was a man of disjointed ideas, as is expressed through the eccentric protagonists that dominate his works. Part cynic and part genius, Kurt Vonnegut’s brilliance as a satirist derives from the deranged nature of the atrocities he had witnessed in his life. The reason Vonnegut’s satire is so popular and works so well is because Vonnegut had personal ties to all the elements that he lambasted in his works. Vonnegut’s experience as a soldier in WWII during firebombing of Dresden corrupted his mind and enabled him to express the chaotic reality of war, violence, obsession, sex and government in a raw and personal manner. Through three works specifically, “Welcome to the Monkey House,” “Harrison Bergeron,” and Slaughterhouse-five,

In the story In Praise of Fast Food the author is arguing how much better industrialized food is then natural food. Most believe eating natural is the way to go and processed foods is not good for the body. To our ancestors natural foods were not good. “Natural often tastes bad. Fresh meat was rank, and tough, fresh fruits incredibly sour, fresh vegetables bitter.”(Laudan 332) Our ancestors had it much harder than what we do today. Food is now more convenient leaving us more time and giving us more options then what our ancestors had.

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,

Kurt Vonnegut’s personal experiences of World War II and the firebombing of Dresden were important factors in determining his writing style and the political and philosophical views that it conveyed. Throughout his works, the overarching message that Vonnegut delivers is the need for love and compassion in a world where humans are helpless against an indifferent fate.

As a Hospitality Industry Consultant, I have been selected to solve Café Hip’s problems. In this report, I address the problems at Café Hip, power issues between the executive chef Ritchie Gravy and the food and beverage (F & B) manager Michelle Cook and how might playing with the power structures affect Café Hip. Analyzing the information provided by Café Hip, there is a way out suggestion given for neutralize Ritchie’s power without effecting performance, using teamwork, teambuilding, mentoring and coaching solve the continuation of toxic emotions in Café Hip.