Kurt Vonnegut as Social Critic Essay

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.

Many writers in history have written science fiction novels and had great success with them, but only a few have been as enduring over time as Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. Slaughterhouse-Five is a personal novel which draws upon Vonnegut's experience's as a scout in World War Two, his capture and becoming a prisoner of war, and his witnessing of the fire bombing of Dresden in February of 1945 (the greatest man-caused massacre in history). The novel is about the life and times of a World War Two veteran named Billy Pilgrim. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut uses structure and point of view to portray the theme that time is relative.

Vonnegut exercised a minimal and comical style of writing to communicate his views against war. His experience in high school and

In the story, Harrison Bergeron, one learns that the author, Kurt Vonnegut, does not like the way society is. He does not like how people judge one another because one is not as attractive, or smarter, or funnier. He

Every so often, a person comes along and encompasses the meaning of a generation. This person will capture everything people want to say, and then word it so well that his or her name becomes legendary. The sixties was an era with many of these people, each with his or her own means of reaching the people. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., armed with a typewriter and a motive, was amongst those that defined the sixties. Like other notable figures of the sixties, his strong opinions moved the people. Vonnegut’s opinions cover a wide range of topics and address almost all aspects of society. He represented the flower children of the sixties, as he

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, 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.

So long as mankind inhabits the Earth will there be war, death, and destruction. Since the beginning of time, there have been opposites. Even before man had the ability to rationalize theories were there unalike aspects of life. Every quality depends on the existence of its own opposite, or it would not at all exist. Therefore it goes without saying that suffering and death (two entities closely associated with war) are inevitable. These attributes, both negative in nature, are inescapable ills of this world. “What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers.” Kurt Vonnegut’s account of the destructiveness of warfare desensitizes and dehumanizes Billy Pilgrim in his novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, and in a greater sense, humanity as a whole. In short, Slaughterhouse-Five follows a man through his ability to cope with life before,

On August 6, 1945, as World War II was reaching a turning point, a weapon of mass destruction was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, Japan by the United States. The bomb killed over one hundred thousand people, and effectively ended World War II within weeks. Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle, details plans for a novel about important people and what they were doing the day the bomb was dropped, which it was to be written by Jonah, the book’s narrator. The book, called The Day the World Ended, allowed Jonah to meet members of his Bokononism karass, a team “that [will] do God’s Will without ever discovering what they are doing” (Vonnegut 2). Through his research for the book he met the Hoenikkers, a family whose father, Felix, was one of the main contributors to the conception of the atomic bomb. Jonah’s search to gather information that would “emphasize the human rather than the technical side of the bomb” led him to visit the research facility that Dr. Felix Hoenikker worked at, which is where he also discovered that Hoenikker was working on a deadly substance called ice-nine (Vonnegut 7). Ice-nine was requested to be developed by the Marines to freeze mud, but once this substance was actually created, it proved to be much more dangerous. The substance, and the book itself, is a criticism of the arms race and the dangers of science advancing too quickly, the effects dangerous weapons can have on the earth if not used responsibly, the naivety people can have while developing

For this essay, I decided to pick two terms that describe Cat's Cradle. I felt that satire and fantasy were two terms that suited the novel quite well. The book qualifies as a satire because it makes a mockery of things that were of concern in the sixties. For example, the Cuban missile crisis was a big issue in the early sixties. Religion was taken much more seriously, and the family unit was more tightly wound. In the novel, the threat comes not from a large warhead, but from a small crystal of Ice-nine. Religion is satired in Bokononism, which is a religion that is based on lies. The family unit is satired by the Hoenikkers. The father is detached from reality, the sister is a

Thus, the story centers around an extremely wealthy, privileged man who opts to spend all his time and money helping the both materially and spiritually poor, and the attempts of a lawyer, bankers and family declaring him insane. Vonnegut examines troubling social issues that he sees pervading America: excessive wealth alongside dire poverty; attitudes that make the poor, despised, even by themselves; purposelessness, bred alike by unemployment and unearned riches; and the loneliness, depression, and suicidal complexes generated by such an economic and moral structure. Deconstruction serves a dual role in our analysis work both as a preparatory technique to get research data ready for use in other ways; and a method of exposing, and testing assumptions deeply embedded in our mental models.

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’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.

Will Rogers once said “We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.” This quote is what we should strive for in reality but in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”, “Harrison Bergeron”, and “All the King’s Horses” this is the exactly the opposite of what occurs in his stories. In “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”, the earth is overcrowded, people live forever, the same politicians have been in office forever and no one recognizes each other’s rights. In “Harrison Bergeron” the people of America don’t even have any rights; they are “equal” in all aspects of life and in “All the King’s Horses” people are being used as chess pieces and not as human beings.