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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). -
Being in the Early Novels of Kurt Vonnegut
A MORAL BEING IN AN AESTHETIC WORLD: BEING IN THE EARLY NOVELS OF KURT VONNEGUT BY JAMES HUBBARD A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS English May 2015 Winston-Salem, North Carolina Approved By: James Hans, Ph.D., Advisor Barry Maine, Ph.D., Chair Jefferson Holdridge, Ph.D. Table of Contents Table of Contents ii Abstract iii Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Being Thrown 7 Chapter 3: Being as a Happening of Truth 27 Chapter 4: Projecting the Poetry of Being 47 References 53 Curriculum Vitae 54 ii Abstract In this this paper I will address notions of being in four of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels using Martin Heidegger’s aesthetic phenomenology. The four novels that this paper will address are Player Piano, Sirens of Titan, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Breakfast of Champions. Player Piano and Sirens of Titan are Vonnegut’s first two novels, and they approach being in terms of what Heidegger referred to as “throwness.” These initial inquiries into aspects of existence give way to a fully developed notion of being in Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions. These novels are full aware of themselves has happenings of truth containing something of their author’s own being. Through these happenings, Vonnegut is able to poetically project himself in a way that not only reveals his own being, but also serves as a mirror that can reveal the being of those reflected in it. iii Chapter 1: Introduction Kurt Vonnegut’s literary significance is due, at least in part, to the place that he has carved out for himself in popular culture. -
Vonnegut's Criticisms of Modern Society Candace Anne Strawn Iowa State University
Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 1972 Vonnegut's criticisms of modern society Candace Anne Strawn Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd Part of the American Literature Commons, and the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Strawn, Candace Anne, "Vonnegut's criticisms of modern society" (1972). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 34. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/34 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Retrospective Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ---~- ~--~-~- - Vonnegut's criticisms of modern society by Candace Anne Strawn A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS Major: English Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 1972 ii. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page I. SOME PERSPECTIVES OF MODERN SOCIETY 1 II. IRRATIONALITY OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR 19 III. DEHUMANIZATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL 29 IV. MAN'S INHUMANITY TO MAN 37 v. CONCLUSION 45 VI. A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 48 1 I. SOME PERSPECTIVES OF MODERN SOCIETY In his age-old effort to predict the future, man has tried many methods, including a careful study of past history. Although the act of predicting social events is largely theoretical--since it is necessarily a tentative process--numerous historians, sociologists, theologians, scientists, and artists persist in discovering trends or seeing patterns in the movement of history. -
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. -
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: Morality-Myth in the Antinovel
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: Morality-Myth in the Antinovel DAVID MYERS, University of Adelaide In his seven novels to date, from Player Piano to Breakfast of Champions,1 Vonnegut has contributed to the creation of a mythology .of our times.2 In much the same way as Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises captured the mood of the lost generation, and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath the bitterness of the thirties depression, Vonnegut has expressed the authentic spirit of the nuclear age generation. World-weary, pessimistic, cynical, and flippant, Vonnegut is tolerant of human behavior to the point of being overindulgent, sadly convinced that human beings cannot be otherwise than the monsters that they are, and yet paradoxically given to both satire and sermon as though driven on by a hope beyond hopelessness that he may yet turn man from his stupidity and evil. It is the aim of this article to examine the morality myth that Vonnegut has created and at the same time to characterize features of the antinovel with which he expresses this myth. By means of this analysis I hope to demonstrate that Vonnegut's popularity is not to be ascribed to a mere fad, but that in content and form he has represented an important aspect of the outlook of our age. Aesthetically, Vonnegut's early works owe much to science fiction and the canons of Pop Art,3 but his art transcends their hackneyed conventions and should be regarded as serious and original literature. Fiedler contends that we should regard Vonnegut's novels as Pop Art because they focus on fantasy, myth, plot, and entertainment rather than on characterization and demanding symbolism. -
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. -
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. -
Nightmare on Main Street: an Analysis of the Urban Environment in Dystopian Fiction an Honors Thesis (HONRS 499) by Alyson Donic
Nightmare on Main Street: An Analysis of the Urban Environment in Dystopian Fiction An Honors Thesis (HONRS 499) by Alyson Donica Thesis Advisor Francis Parker Ball State University Muncie, Indiana April 2012 Expected Date of Graduation May 2012 J - / f ' 2 Abstract The rise of the dystopian genre gave authors a new way to publicly critique societal problems. By exaggerating the current situation, authors are able to construct a world that exposes society's darkest fears. This characteristic of dystopian literature can be used as a tool to examine the problems with the physical structure of the city at the time the novels were written. The Machine Stops (1909), by E.M. Forster, exaggerates the pollution that British cities were experiencing at the height of the Industrial Revolution. Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano (1952) extrapolates the monotony created by post-WWII developments, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003) provides the readers with a look at a post industrial city destroyed by ecological and biological disaster. Additionally, each novel demonstrates a tendency of dystopian literature to utilize the physical description of the city to emphasize the society's socioeconomic structure. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Francis Parker for advising me throughout this project. His patience and interest in my paper over the past year has been crucial in the completion of this honors thesis. I would like to thank Dr. Geralyn Strecker for reminding me about all of those tricky formatting skills that were necessary in completing this paper. 3 As a society, we do not like to imagine our darkest fears. -
Contrapuntal Lines: Nostalgia in Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano
Camelia Gradinaru / Contrapuntal Lines: Nostalgia in Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano META: RESEARCH IN HERMENEUTICS, PHENOMENOLOGY, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY VOL. IX, NO. 2 / DECEMBER 2017: 607-629, ISSN 2067-3655, www.metajournal.org Contrapuntal Lines: Nostalgia in Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano Camelia Gradinaru “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi Abstract The paper focuses on the modalities of nostalgia in a techno-saturated world. Nostalgia is a protean concept that maintains a strong relationship with technology. The latter can mediate, alleviate or trigger nostalgic feelings and discourses orientated not only towards the past, but also towards the present and the future. In this respect, this paper will investigate how nostalgia was used as a narrative tool by Kurt Vonnegut in his Player Piano at several important levels of the plot and how it becomes a character that acts obscurely in some key moments. Firstly, I will analyse the modalities through which nostalgia develops a subtle relationship with technology and progress. Secondly, I will examine how the occurrences of player piano work in the novel as clues that foreshadow the on-coming intrusion of this feeling in the current mood of the personages. Thirdly, I will discuss the nostalgia for humanity in the framework offered by postmodernism. The crisis of metanarratives does not drive nostalgia towards a simple past, but it steers it towards a set of petite histoires that blurs the temporal orientation of nostalgia. Keywords: nostalgia, player piano, technology, postmodernism, -
•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 -
Living in Truth in the Age of Automatization
Living in Truth in the Age of Automatization Author: Jordan Jenkins Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/3045 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2013 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Boston College The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of Political Science LIVING IN TRUTH IN THE AGE OF AUTOMATIZATION A Thesis by JORDAN JENKINS submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts May 2013 © copyright by Jordan Jenkins 2013 "Living in Truth in the Age of Automatization" by Jordan Jenkins, Advised by Dr. Gerald Easter "Living in Truth in the Age of Automatization" is a discussion of dehumanization in the period of technological and bureaucratic supremacy. The article uses the writings of former Czech president Václav Havel and American novelist Kurt Vonnegut to argue that neither the automatization inherent within the Eastern Communist Model nor the mass consumer culture of the Western Capitalist Model are ideal, and to discuss the possibility of a third way, a way called "living in truth" which protects human dignity and the right of every man to pursue meaningful work in a society. Contents 1. Two Men with Similar Conclusions.................................................................1 2. Václav Havel - Dehumanization in the Post-Totalitarian State.......................8 ![1] Ideology and the Post-Totalitarian system..........................................11 ![2] Technology and the West....................................................................18 3. Kurt Vonnegut - Dehumanization in the age of Technological Supremacy......27 ![1] The Saga of Havel's Greengrocer Retold in Harrison Bergeron..........28 ![2] Player Piano and the Devaluation of Human Labor.............................35 [3] A Man Without a Country.....................................................................45 4. -
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.