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A Discourse of Redemption in Three of Kurt Vonnegut's Novels
Tutton Parker 1 What’s in the Potato Barn: A Discourse of Redemption in Three of Kurt Vonnegut’s Novels A Thesis Submitted to The Faculty of the College of Arts and Science in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts and English By Rebecca Tutton Parker April 2018 Tutton Parker 2 Liberty University College of Arts and Sciences Master of Arts in English Student Name: Rebecca Tutton Parker Thesis Chair Date First Reader Date Second Reader Date Tutton Parker 3 Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction………………………………………………………………………...4 Chapter Two: Redemption in Slaughterhouse-Five and Bluebeard…………………………..…23 Chapter Three: Rabo Karabekian’s Path to Redemption in Breakfast of Champions…………...42 Chapter Four: How Rabo Karabekian Brings Redemption to Kurt Vonnegut…………………..54 Chapter Five: Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..72 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………..75 Tutton Parker 4 Chapter One: Introduction The Bluebeard folktale has been recorded since the seventeenth century with historical roots even further back in history. What is most commonly referred to as Bluebeard, however, started as a Mother Goose tale transcribed by Charles Perrault in 1697. The story is about a man with a blue beard who had many wives and told them not to go into a certain room of his castle (Hermansson ix). Inevitably when each wife was given the golden key to the room and a chance alone in the house, she would always open the door and find the dead bodies of past wives. She would then meet her own death at the hands of her husband. According to Casie Hermansson, the tale was very popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which spurred many literary figures to adapt it, including James Boswell, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, and Thomas Carlyle (x). -
Elements of Gallows Humor in Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five
Journal of Literature, Languages and Linguistics www.iiste.org ISSN 2422-8435 An International Peer-reviewed Journal Vol.41, 2018 Elements of Gallows Humor in Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five Negar Khodabandehloo M.A. Student of Payame Noor University, Arak Branch, Iran Mojgan Eyvazi Assistant professor, English Department,Payam-e-Noor University, Tehran, Iran Abstract This study analyzes the outstanding satirist Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughter-house-five to demonstrate how the elements of Gallows Humor are applied to provide a better understanding of the author's worldview and of his narrative process. This is an anti-war book in which Vonnegut has attempted to blend the serious theme with humor. Through the choice of his protagonist- Billy Pilgrim- and the manipulation of black humor, Vonnegut exposes the atrocities of war from a new viewpoint. The focal point is to extract the phrases containing gallows humor, a sort of black humor, to be studied and explained by details, accordingly some literary terms are to be precisely defined and the unique style of writing is indispensable. Keywords: Anti-war, Black Humor, Gallows Humor, Satire, Humor, Vonnegut 1. Introduction Gallows humor is a kind of black humor in which the threatened person witnesses the oppression. As the name represents, the person threatened is implicated with no hope and no way to escape from the disaster. The misfortune is obvious to him, and he prefers joking about it instead of feeling sorrow. This section includes a definition of the gallows humor followed by some examples for more clarifications. In an essay posted on the website of the Philosophy Club, which meets regularly in Santa Monica, CA. -
Block Universes and Strange Loop Phenomena In
STRANGE TIME: BLOCK UNIVERSES AND STRANGE LOOP PHENOMENA IN TWO NOVELS BY KURT VONNEGUT by Francis C. Altomare IV A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida August 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author wishes to express his most sincere thanks to those instrumental in the completion of this thesis, especially Dr. Thomas Martin, Dr. Steven Blakemore, and Dr. Don Adams, all of whose comments and guidance were invaluable in its preparation. In addition, he would like to thank Dr. Nicholas Reboli, Dr. Douglas R. Hofstadter, and Dr. Thomas Goodmann for providing crucial inspiration for this project. The support of Joanne Weiner and the author's colleagues at Private Tutoring Services, Inc. is also greatly appreciated. Lastly, the author would like to thank his family for their unyielding support during the completion of this manuscript. iii ABSTRACT Author: Francis C. Altomare IV Title: Strange Time: Block Universes and Strange Loop Phenomena in Two Novels by Kurt Vonnegut Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Thomas L. Martin Degree: Master of Arts Year: 2010 Einsteinian relativity forever altered our understanding of the metaphysics of time. This study considers how this scientific theory affects the formulation of time in postmodern narratives as a necessary step toward understanding the relationship between empirical science and literary art. Two novels by Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse-Five, exemplify this synthesis. Close readings of these texts reveal an underlying temporal scheme deeply informed by relativity. -
Context and Neglect: Kurt Vonnegut and the Middleclass Magazine
Context and Neglect: Kurt Vonnegut and the Middleclass Magazine The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:37945101 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Context and Neglect: Kurt Vonnegut and the Middleclass Magazine. Lori Philbin A Thesis in the Field of English for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies Harvard University May 2018 Copyright 2018 Lori Philbin Abstract The scholarship focusing on the work of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. has largely centered on his novels. Most studies have neglected Vonnegut’s start in the popular magazine market writing short stories. A few notable scholars have focused on the stories: Jerome Klinkowitz, Peter J. Reed, Jeff Karon, James Thorson, and Steve Gronert Ellerhoff. Even with the work of such scholars, there have been few studies that consider the context of Vonnegut’s earliest stories and how the influence of the middleclass magazine market not only shaped Vonnegut’s career but had continued impact on his later novels. This study explores Vonnegut’s first eight stories: “Report on the Barnhouse Effect,” “Thanasphere,” “EPICAC,” “All the King’s Horses,” “Mnemonics,” “The Euphio Question,” “The Foster Portfolio,” and “More Stately Mansions.” The stories are considered within the context of their first publication venue, the magazine Collier’s, and how that context shows connections between the stories and his novels such as Player Piano, Cat’s Cradle, and Slaughterhouse-Five. -
Reading Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions with an Eye to Walt Whitman
RSA Journal 13 21 ROBERTO SERRAI Landscapes of Destruction: Reading Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions with an Eye to Walt Whitman In heart, I am an American artist, and I have no guilt... Patti Smith, Babel (1978) Breakfast of Champions, first published in 1973, is probably one of Kurt Vonnegut's most destructive, pessimistic and nihilistic works. Even if we chose to label it a comedy, or a farce, its humor would still be of a very black qual ity.1 Thus, maybe, the book would be more accurately described as a satire verging on tragedy. Vonnegut was not new to the theme of destruction; where the earlier novel Cats Cradle (1963) is a long allegory on power and author ity which ends in catastrophe, Mother Night (1961) and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) unfold as chronicles of private vicissitudes set against the tragic back drop of a major historical event, World War II. Along with a deep reflection on identity, ambiguity, and the thorny issue of distinguishing innocence from guilt, both share an outright condemnation of war's useless folly and of all the mystifications often concocted to disguise it. In the latter work, remarkably, the horror of the chosen exemplum — the allied firebombing of the German city of Dresden, which in three days (2/13-15/1945) killed more than 135.000 harmless civilians — is so immense to prove basically impossible to represent. Billy Pilgrim, the young American POW most of the book focuses on, takes shelter in a deep underground meat locker "hollowed in living rock" (S5 209) and so is only able to witness the bomb runs' aftermath, the morning when Dresden suddenly "was like the moon" (S5 229). -
Bard Focuses on Genocide in Darfur
May the 21, 2007 Commencement Bard Focuses on Speaker Mayor Genocide in Darfur Bloomberg By Frank Brancely Draws Student Human-rights students, activists, and other attrition.” His essential line of advocacy concerned members of the Bard community were busy on China and its unnecessarily malignant complicity campus during the last week in April when the in the genocide, explicitly highlighting its ongoing Criticism Darfur Action Campaign (DAC)/Students Taking investment of hundreds of millions of dollars into Action Now (STAND), devoted a week to organized the Sudanese government and its oil production one By Jason Mastbaum events that included speakers, a fundraiser and of the primary sources of military income. Reeves Only a day after the news release documentary screenings, all focusing on the advocated that those conscious of Darfur place announcing that New York City Mayor Michael ongoing conflict in the Darfur region of Western pressure on the Chinese government to realize the Bloomberg would be the commencement speaker Sudan where more than an estimated 400,000 contradiction in its Olympic slogan “One World, One this May, a number of Bard students started making innocent people have been killed. Dream” and its support of a government that has their displeasure known. As these students wrote Survivors and Darfuri refugees shared fueled brutal militias to ceaseless slaughter. in a letter to the administration, “We are dismayed, their stories in “Darfur Diaries,” a documentary Actress Mia Farrow, the second-speaker disappointed, and outraged by this prospect.” containing a plea of help, carefully constructed of the week, drew an even greater crowd with her What caused such an immediate, by a trio of filmmakers. -
University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts Issue 20 | Spring 2015
University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts Issue 20 | Spring 2015 Title “Being Alive is a Crock of Shit” - Kurt Vonnegut’s Kind Pessimism Author Andrew Hicks Publication FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts Issue Number 20 Issue Date Spring 2015 Publication Date 01/06/2015 Editors Yanbing Er and Sarah Bernstein FORUM claims non-exclusive rights to reproduce this article electronically (in full or in part) and to publish this work in any such media current or later developed. The author retains all rights, including the right to be identified as the author wherever and whenever this article is published, and the right to use all or part of the article and abstracts, with or without revision or modification in compilations or other publications. Any latter publication shall recognise FORUM as the original publisher. FORUM | ISSUE 20 Andrew Hicks 1 “Being Alive is a Crock of Shit” – Kurt Vonnegut’s Kind Pessimism Andrew Hicks University of Bristol Kurt Vonnegut, long considered one of the arch-misanthropes of the American literary canon, could more accurately be said to have only fallen into genuine cynicism at the very end of his life. Before this final despair, however, Vonnegut was a trenchant critic of a variety of aspects of American culture. In The Sirens of Titan (1959) and Slapstick (1976), Vonnegut respectively satirises the self- made myth of the American Dream and tackles the issue of modern loneliness. In both novels, he proposes far more modest but perhaps more achievable and compassionate goals than those promised by American convention – goals that only appear pessimistically limited in light of unrealistic or unfulfilled ideals. -
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Confronts the Death of the Author Justin Philip Mayerchak Florida International University, [email protected]
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by DigitalCommons@Florida International University Florida International University FIU Digital Commons FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations University Graduate School 4-1-2016 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Confronts the Death of the Author Justin Philip Mayerchak Florida International University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Mayerchak, Justin Philip, "Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Confronts the Death of the Author" (2016). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2440. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2440 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the University Graduate School at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida KURT VONNEGUT JR. CONFRONTS THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTERS OF ARTS in ENGLISH by Justin Philip Mayerchak 2016 To: Dean Michael R. Heithaus College of Arts, Sciences and Education This thesis, written by Justin Philip Mayerchak, and entitled Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Confronts the Death of the Author, having been approved in respect to style and intellectual content, is referred to you for judgment. We have read this thesis and recommend that it be approved. _______________________________________ Bruce Harvey _______________________________________ Ana Lusczynka _______________________________________ Nathaniel Cadle, Major Professor Date of Defense: April 1, 2016 The thesis of Justin Philip Mayerchak is approved. -
By Sarah J Griffith
THE MORAL EGOTIST: EVOLUTION OF STYLE IN KURT VONNEGUT’S SATIRE by Sarah J Griffith The Moral Egotist: Evolution of Style in Kurt Vonnegut’s Satire by Sarah J Griffith A thesis presented for the B.A. Degree with Honors in The Department of English University of Michigan Spring 2008 © 2008 Sarah J Griffith Acknowledgements I would like to thank my teachers, advisors, friends, and family without whose support this project may never have become a reality. My thesis advisor, Eric Rabkin, has been an absolutely invaluable resource of both support and tough-love. He earned my respect on the first day we met and I felt compelled to spend the following weeks drafting a project statement grand enough to satisfy his high standards. He is a phenomenal mentor and academic from whom I have learned more about writing in six months than ever before. During the writing process, my teammates and friends were constant sources of alternate encouragement, guidance, and comic relief. Many thanks to Tyler Kinley for providing a tireless and creative ear for the development of my ideas, though I am fortunate in that this comes as no surprise. Most importantly, much appreciation goes to my overwhelmingly supportive parents who affirmed their love for me one more time in soldiering through the early drafts of my writing. Thanks to my father from whom I get my passion for language and my mother whose unmatched patience and compassion have buoyed me up time and again throughout this intensive project. Gratitude is also due to both of them for my opportunity to attend the University of Michigan to meet and work with all of the incredible individuals mentioned above. -
On Updike and Vonnegut
Dawes 1 Review Greg Dawes Somewhere Beyond Vertigo and Amnesia: Updike's Toward the End of Time and Vonnegut's Timequake Two of our elder statesmen, two of our most renowned novelists, John Updike and Kurt Vonnegut, have published science fiction novels on the notion of time. In their context time can be construed in a number of ways. In a general sense both Updike and Vonnegut are nearing the end of their (biological) time, both having published an enormous amount of enlightening fiction. We are also coming upon the end of the millenium and we appear to be witnessing the decline of the American empire. Both novels, Updike's Toward the End of Time and Vonnegut's Timequake deal with these existential and social issues and attempt to prod us into doing something about the socio- economic and political changes that are taking place in the late 1990s. In an essay on Vonnegut's critics, John Irving, it seems to me, sums up poetically Vonnegut's and Updike's intentions as novelists: Catharsis--perhaps it is also an unpopular word today, or at least an old- fashioned one--relies on upsetting readers. You purge fear through evoking it, you purify pain by rendering it, you bathe the heart with tears. Vonnegut can hurt you, and he does; he means to, too. When the sunny dreams and the harmless untruths evaporate--and they always do--a ruined planet is what we look upon; his books make us wish we were better.1 Copyright © 1998 by Greg Dawes and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087 Dawes 2 Timequake is written with irony, humor and sarcasm to wake us from our stupor and apathy and to warn us of what awaits if we do not try to radically transform this society. -
POSTMODERN MYTHOLOGY and the CONSTRUCTION of a VONNEGUTIAN SOCIAL THEORY by Zachary P. Pe
“NO DAMN CAT, AND NO DAMN CRADLE”: POSTMODERN MYTHOLOGY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF A VONNEGUTIAN SOCIAL THEORY by Zachary P. Perdieu, B.A. A thesis submitted to the Graduate Council of Texas State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts with a Major in Literature May 2016 Committee Members: Robert T. Tally Jr., Chair Allan Chavkin Mark Busby COPYRIGHT by Zachary P. Perdieu 2016 FAIR USE AND AUTHOR’S PERMISSION STATEMENT Fair Use This work is protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States (Public Law 94-553, section 107). Consistent with fair use as defined in the Copyright Laws, brief quotations from this material are allowed with proper acknowledgment. Use of this material for financial gain without the author’s express written permission is not allowed. Duplication Permission As the copyright holder of this work I, Zachary P. Perdieu, authorize duplication of this work, in whole or in part, for educational or scholarly purposes only. DEDICATION Vonnegut introduced the following letter to babies in God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies – ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind’” (129). This thesis is dedicated to my grandmother, Barbara Wilson, for being my own personal manifestation of this “letter to babies.” It is also for Dr. Steven Connelly. I don’t know where I would be if he hadn’t assigned three Vonnegut novels in his freshmen composition course at Indiana State University, but I can say with certainty that I wouldn’t be writing a dedication for my master’s thesis on Kurt Vonnegut. -
Kurt Vonnegut Biography
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) Born in Indianapolis. Attended Cornell University, majoring in chemistry. Served in WWII and was POW in Dresden when 135,000 were killed by fire bombs. His mother committed suicide on Mother’s Day 1944. Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) Attended University of Chicago as graduate student in anthropology, but his thesis was rejected. In 1971 Chicago awarded him the MA, accepting his novel Cat’s Cradle as substitute for his thesis. Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) After WWII he married his childhood sweetheart Jane Cox and eventually raised seven children, three with her, three adopted after his sister Alice died and one adopted with his second wife Jill Krementz. Worked in public relations for General Electric. Quit in 1950 to write science fiction. Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) Player Piano (1952) was his first novel, followed by The Sirens of Titan (1959) and Mother Night (1961). Cat’s Cradle (1963) was his first book to be published in hard back, followed by God Bless You Mr. Rosewater (1965) Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) Considered giving up writing but took a position teaching at the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop where he started writing Slaughter House Five (1969) which became his first big best seller. Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) Other novels included Breakfast of Champions (1973), Slapstick (1976), Jailbird (1979), Deadeye Dick (1982), Galápagos (1985), Bluebeard (1987), Hocus Pocus (1990), and Timequake (1997). Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) He smoked unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes all of his adult life, calling it a “classy way to commit suicide.” In TimeQuake (1997) he wrote that his alter ego Kilgore Trout would die when he was 84.