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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). -
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). -
Archive I: Down by the Old Slipstream
Archive I: who gets a whole lot less recognition than I for one think he deserves: Barrington J. Bayley. Down by the Old Slipstream Bayley is an unusual writer in a variety of Arthur D. Hlavaty, 206 Valentine Street, ways. One can see him as a strange sort of Yonkers, NY 10704-1814. 914-965-4861. amphibian, in that he has been most published by [email protected] New Worlds and by DAW. He is not a writer one <http://www.livejournal.com/users/supergee/> seeks out for literary merit, characterization, elegant <http://www.maroney.org/hlavaty/> prose, adventure, or sex. If anything, he can be © 2018 by Arthur D. Hlavaty. Staff: Bernadette compared with writers such as Clement, Niven, Bosky, Kevin J. Maroney, Shekinah Dax, and the and Hogan,* who seek to do only one thing in their Valentine’s Castle Rat Pack. Permission to reprint in any nonprofit publication is hereby granted, on sf. But while the others speculate scientifically, condition that I am credited and sent a copy. Bayley deals with philosophical and spiritual questions, matters of the essence of reality. This is a new idea. If I do more of these, they Bayley has been largely concerned with the nature of Time in his writings, and perhaps his two will go to efanzines but may not be sent best books until now, Collision Course and The Fall of postally or as .txt files. If you want to stay on Chronopolis, presented new approaches to this either mailing list for these, please reply. Nice problem. More recently, he has incorporated such Distinctions will continue as before. -
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. -
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. -
•Œall Persons Living and Dead Are Purely Coincidental:Â•Š Unity, Dissolution, and the Humanist Wampeter of Kurt Vonnegu
W&M ScholarWorks Undergraduate Honors Theses Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 4-2014 “All Persons Living and Dead Are Purely Coincidental:” Unity, Dissolution, and the Humanist Wampeter of Kurt Vonnegut’s Universe Danielle M. Clarke College of William and Mary Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Clarke, Danielle M., "“All Persons Living and Dead Are Purely Coincidental:” Unity, Dissolution, and the Humanist Wampeter of Kurt Vonnegut’s Universe" (2014). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 56. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/56 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Clarke 2 Table of Contents: Introduction…………………………………………………………………..……………3 Reading Cosmically…………………………………………………………...…………12 Reading Thematically……………..……..………………………………………………29 Reading Holisitcally …………...…………...……………………………………………38 Reading Theoretically …………………………………………...………………………58 Conclusions………………………………………………………………………………75 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………...…………85 Works Consulted…………………………………………………………………………89 Clarke 3 Introduction “‘Being alive is a crock of shit’" (3) writes Kurt Vonnegut in the opening chapter of Timequake (1997), quoting “the old science fiction writer -
Postmodernist Fusion of Historical Facts and Fictional Reality in Kurt Vonnegut’S Hocus Pocus
====================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 Vol. 19:3 March 2019 India’s Higher Education Authority UGC Approved List of Journals Serial Number 49042 ===================================================================== Postmodernist Fusion of Historical Facts and Fictional Reality in Kurt Vonnegut’s Hocus Pocus T. Kavivarman Dr. K. Ganeshram Ph.D. Research Scholar Assistant Professor Department of English Department of English Annamalai University Annamalai University [email protected] [email protected] Abstract This paper attempts to explore Kurt Vonnegut’s preoccupation with the fantastical takeover of America by International conglomerates in his novel, Hocus Pocus. Vonnegut’s use of a futuristic perspective and many kinds of scientific discoveries and inventions are examined. The paper elaborates Vonnegut’s postmodernist intermingling of historical facts and fictional reality and flair for historical revisionism. Vonnegut’s apocalyptic motifs of strange learning disabilities and disorders and his use of music to transcending the realm of the ordinary receive special attention. Keywords: Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, Postmodern, Reality, Disabilities, Disorders Kurt Vonnegut occupies a prominent place in American literature. His concerns about technology, the future and myth arise out of the events of his life. His life, his influences, and personal experiences find expression in art. His fiction of the sixties is a fair example of American cultural change. His materials are science, philosophy and anthropology but their form is one that arises out of bourgeoisie life. In an age of complexity and obscurity both of narrative form and vision, Vonnegut appears doggedly middle class, conforming to his simple disposition towards plain truth even in the face of the most challenging atrocities. -
A Postmodern Iconography: Vonnegut and the Great American Novel
A POSTMODERNICONOGRAPHY: VONNEGUTAND THE GREATAMERICAN NOVEL "Call me Jonah". The opening line of Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vomegut's end-of-the-world masterpiece, unmistakably echoes that of Moby-Dick, Herman Melville's end-of-the-world masterpiece. Indeed, such echoes are audible elsewhere in Cat's Cradle, from the "cetacean" Mount MacCabe, which looks like a whale with a snapped harpoon protruding from it, to the great Ahab-like quarrel with God, humorously figured in Bokonon's thumb-nosing gesture at the novel's end. In pointing to Moby-Dick, as likely a candidate as ever was for the "great American novel". Vonnegut registers his own entry into the contest, but here it is also bound up in the laughable impossibility of the project. The novels of Kurt Vonnegut are not generally the first to come to mind when one thinks of the great American novel. Indeed, this latter, elusive thing-impossible and, perhaps, not even desirable-has long been a bit of a joke, the sort of thing an aspiring writer claims to be working on, or (even more likely) something a writer's parents, friends, and others say that he or she is working on. The great American novel is always a dream deferred; it cannot really exist, it seems, for that very reality would probably undermine any novel's greatness. The "great American novel" really belongs to the nineteenth century, not the twentieth. It existed there as a dream of writers and critics, desperate to carve a distinct national culture from the variously influential European traditions. -
Round 11 - Tossups
NSC 2018 - Round 11 - Tossups 1. It's not a general, but this was the highest post held by the author of the military textbook Taktika, who was known as "the Wise." The Chalke Gate was the main entrance to the Great Palace where holders of this post lived. The final holder of this post legendarily was turned into marble after he died fighting alongside Giovanni Giustiniani of Genoa. The daughter of a holder of this post wrote the (*) Alexiad during the Crusades. The first of the Leonid Dynasty to hold this post was known as "the Thracian." The last man to hold this title was killed in 1453 while defending his capital city from a successful attack launched by the forces of Mehmed II. For 10 points, name this title held by an official who ruled from Constantinople. ANSWER: Byzantine emperor [or Eastern Roman Emperor; prompt on emperor; prompt on Roman Emperor; prompt on partial answers like Byzantine rulers] <Bentley, History - European> 2. This woman complains that her "proportioned, spiritless poems" are published "away in brutish London, for a hollow crown" in a 52-stanza sequence that tells her "Simon will listen while you read a song." This author's major work contains a section discussing the "four monarchies," and a poem that begins by noting "all may judge" the "errors" of the title "ill-formed (*) offspring of my feeble brain." This poet, the subject of an "Homage" by John Berryman, wrote "If ever two were one, then surely we" in a poem addressed to her "dear and loving husband." For 10 points, name this 17th-century poet who wrote "Verses upon the Burning of our House" and the book The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America. -
The Critical Response to Kurt Vonnegut'
H-PCAACA Bane on Mustazza, 'The Critical Response to Kurt Vonnegut' Review published on Thursday, June 1, 1995 Leonard Mustazza, ed. The Critical Response to Kurt Vonnegut. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994. xxxiii + 346 pp. $59.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-313-28634-6. Reviewed by S. Kirk Bane (Arkansas Tech University) Published on H-PCAACA (June, 1995) Leonard Mustazza, Director of Academic Affairs and Professor of English and American Studies at Pennsylvania State University-Ogontz Campus, and author of Forever Pursuing Genesis: The Myth of Eden in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut, has done a commendable job compiling and editing the various critical reactions to the renowned novelist's works. This study, part of a Critical Responses in Arts and Letters Series, contains forty reviews by such critics as Doris Lessing, Stanley Schatt Terry Southern, Jerome Klinkowitz, Granville Hicks, Robert Merrill, Kathryn Hume, Lawrence R. Broer, and Jay McInerney. The volume includes reviews of Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Cat's Cradle God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, Slapstick, Jailbird, Deadeye Dick, Galapagos, Bluebeard, and Hocus Pocus. The text is divided into two parts: The Road to Critical Success, 1952-1969 and The Critical Mainstream, 1970-1993. Mustazza has written a fine introduction to complement his collection of reviews; a helpful Selected Bibliography rounds out the book. Vonnegut students will applaud the publication of this excellent volume. Copyright (c) 1995 by H-Net and PCAACA, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. -
Teen Sex and the Law, 2007, Postmodern Library, Postmodern Library, 2007
Teen Sex and the Law, 2007, Postmodern Library, Postmodern Library, 2007 DOWNLOAD http://bit.ly/1wIY7Vq http://goo.gl/R28nk http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=Teen+Sex+and+the+Law&x=51&y=16 DOWNLOAD http://t.co/OfZB7CuQ27 https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/Teen-Sex-and-the-Law/id416661056 http://bit.ly/YXQu4r Coming Soon!!! A Narrative, John Barth, 2002, Fiction, 396 pages. Two writers, a retiring novelist and an aspiring writer of hypertext, compete to create a novel of a floating opera and explore the cultural lines between print and electronic. Postmodern American Poetry A Norton Anthology, Paul Hoover, 1994, Poetry, 701 pages. A survey of major poets and movements of American postmodern poetry includes more than four hundred poems by 103 poets. The sot-weed factor , John Barth, Jan 1, 1976, Fiction, 795 pages. Breakfast of Champions A Novel, Kurt Vonnegut, Sep 23, 2009, Fiction, 183 pages. In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction. Postmodern American Fiction A Norton Anthology, Paula Geyh, Fred G. Leebron, Andrew Levy, 1998, Fiction, 672 pages. Collects works by sixty-eight authors, including William S. Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, Art Spiegelman, Lynda Barry, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Douglas Coupland. Speaking with the Angel , Nick Hornby, Jul 7, 2011, Fiction, 240 pages. Speaking with the Angel is a collection of short stories, edited by Nick Hornby Hear the Prime Minister explain to the House why he did a runner from Greenford Park service.