Kurt Vonnegut : A Hybrid Of Science Fiction And Satire

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut was written in 1963. "It is a satirical commentary on modern man and his madness" (back cover). It is a book that counters almost every aspect of our society. As well as satire, Vonnegut also includes apocalyptic elements in this novel.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut could easily be imagined as a car. The car itself is a 1995 Dodge Caravan, made up of mismatched parts and one can tell that it has been through a lot and is barely scraping by. There are many parts to Slaughterhouse-Five (just like a car), which can be confusing if one does not take the time to carefully read over the novel. The driving force behind Slaughterhouse-Five can be identified as the novel’s author, Kurt Vonnegut, as Vonnegut pushes the story further and directs the storyline at his own pace.

Throughout Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut chooses to use special literary techniques that better explain his own encounters in war as well as help his readers bare the horridness of war. Vonnegut adds black humor in his text to benefit readers as well as “an author-as-character” perspective to set barriers and help protect his own memories in the war. Without adding these two specific devices, Vonnegut could possibly have lost reader’s interests in the book or lost his own interest in writing the book.

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

What is religion? There is no one correct answer, however, one definition that seems to cover every aspect of most established religions is, "…the most comprehensive and intensive manner of valuing known to human beings" (Pecorino). In Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut takes this definition and creates his own religion in order to satirize all others. Bokononism, Vonnegut's contrived religion, is built on foma, or harmless untruths. Bokononists believe that good societies can only be built by keeping a high tension between good and evil at all times, and that there is no such thing as absolute evil (Schatt 64). They have created their own language with words such as karass, a group of people

Kurt Vonnegut himself is a rhetor having written “Slaughterhouse - Five” as anti-war propaganda. His use of rhetoric works effectively as it shows the struggles of a man who has to live with after-war effects as well a great number of deaths which are shrugged off.

Kurt Vonnegut, was born on November 11, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana, to American-German parents Kurt Vonnegut (Sr.), and Edith Vonnegut. Vonnegut had an older brother, Bernard and an older sister, Alice. Vonnegut graduated from Shortridge High School in Indianapolis in 1940 and went to Cornell University later that fall. Though he majored in chemistry, he was Assistant Managing Editor and Associate Editor of the Cornell newspaper. While at Cornell, Vonnegut enlisted in the United States Army. The Army then transferred him to the Carnegie Institute of Technology and finally the University of Tennessee to study mechanical engineering.

    Cat's Cradle is, "Vonnegut's most highly praised novel. Filled with humor and unforgettable characters, this apocalyptic story tells of Earth's ultimate end, and presents a vision of the future that is both darkly fantastic and funny, as Vonnegut weaves a satirical commentary on modern man and his madness" (Barnes and Noble n.pag).  In Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut uses satire as a vehicle for threatened self-destruction when he designs the government of San Lorenzo.  In addition, the Bokonists practice of Boko-maru, and if the world is going to end in total self destruction and ruin, then people will die, no matter how good people are and what religion people believe.

War is a tragic experience that can motivate people to do many things. Many people have been inspired to write stories, poems, or songs about war. Many of these examples tend to reflect feelings against war. Kurt Vonnegut is no different and his experience with war inspired him to write a series of novels starting with Slaughter-House Five. It is a unique novel expressing Vonnegut's feelings about war. These strong feeling can be seen in the similarities between characters, information about the Tralfamadorians, dark humor, and the structure of the novel.

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,

Satire is an important part of postmodernism and it is one of the most prominent aspects of Vonnegut’s novels, with his humor manifesting itself as a form of black humor. With his very dark sense of humor, Vonnegut confronts many of the negative aspects of the world and describes them in such a way that it disarms and desensitizes the reader to the shock of what they are reading. Slaughterhouse-Five is an excellent example of this. When describing the shock and horror that Billy witnessed during the firebombing of Dresden, Vonnegut takes the time to describe “Weary and Wild Bob and Rumfoord,” characters who “find glory in wholesale death and destruction” (Cox 272). In writing his response to the horrors of war, Vonnegut takes the approach that it is better to make the reader laugh at something and have them slowly realize the horror of what they have read, as opposed to immediately shocking the reader by presenting gory details of his experiences in Dresden. Even the name of his main character is subtle black humor. Billy Pilgrim, whose name is “a reference to John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and connotes that Vonnegut’s pilgrim is an average joe burdened with a life of agony and terror” (F1). His name is also in reference to Vonnegut’s feeling that the Second World War was a war fought by mere children, hence the book’s subtitle The Children’s Crusade. The idea of young men who were no more than children in essence when they were sent off to fight and die in a foreign land is a distressing and horrible idea for many people to think about. Yet through his humor Vonnegut forces the reader to come to terms with this, but in a way that eases a reader into the darkness of the novel instead of running into it head on. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut does not limit his black humor to the topic of war, but also opens up criticisms of society as he sees it. Through the Tralfamadorian aliens that kidnap Billy and take him captive on their planet and the science fiction of Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut uses his humor in regards to a variety of topics not related to war. Once such example of Trout’s novels that are throughout the story is “The Gospel from Outer Space in which a visitor from outer space studied

Kurt Vonnegut’s book, Slaughterhouse-Five, an antiwar book that took 23 years to write, is not what he thought it would be. He explained early on to

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born to his father and Edith Lieber in Indianapolis, Indiana on Armistice Day. At home, his parents struggled to pay every bill but still ensured that their children became educated. After graduating from Cornell University with

Kurt Vonnegut is the author of the book Slaughterhouse Five. Of course it was controversial, and still is. The first chapter addresses the conflicts of creating such a novel in the first chapter of the book. In the book Harrison Starr questioned Vonnegut asking if his book were to be a war book. Vonnegut said it was and Starr “Why don’t you make an anti-glacier book instead?” (4). Vonnegut believed what Starr meant by that was wars, like glaciers, are as unpredictable and unstoppable. (4). As one gets farther into the book it completely changed dynamics. The novel then goes into the story of Billy Pilgrim instead of the autobiographical view from the first chapter. The three main literary elements in which will be focusing on analysing is theme,

Kurt Cobain was born on February 20, 1967, in Aberdeen, Washington. His mother Wendy was a waitress and his father Donald was a mechanic. His