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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. -
Harrison Bergeron," Which First Appeared in Fantasy Ture Or a Pretty Face, Would Feel Like Something the Cat Drug In
KURT VONNEGUT JR. Harrison Ber;geron The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody [Curt Vonnegut Jr. (b. 1922) was born on November 11 in Indianapolis, Indi ana. The son ofan architect and a homemaker, he attended Cornell University was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody and Carnegie Mellon University before the outbreak ofWorld War II, when he else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality interrupted his studies to serve in the U.S. Army. As aprisoner ofwar in Dres was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitu den, Germany, he survived a devastating air raid on February 13, 1945, by tion, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handi staying in a meat locker under a slaughterhouse during the bombing. After capper General. World War II, Vonnegut worked in public relations at the General Electric Com Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April, for pany in Schenectady, New York, before becoming a freelance writer. Player instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in Piano, his first novel, appeared in 1952, followed by a second fantasy novel, that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's The Sirens of Titan, in 1959. Two years later he published Mother Night, a fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away. first-person fictional narrative about World War II. -
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. -
A Study of the Protagonists in the First Six Novels of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE SEARCH FOR A HERO: A STUDY OF THE PROTAGONISTS IN THE FIRST SIX NOVELS OF KURT VONNEGUT, JR. A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English by Kathy Hada May, 1984 The Thesis of Kathy Hada is approved: Dr. Richard Abcarian Dr. Richard Lid Dr. rt Noreen. ommittee Chair California State University, Northridge ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT v INTRODUCTION 1 ChaEters 1 Pla,ler Piano 6 2 The Sirens of Titan 15 3 Mother Night 28 4 Gat's Cradle 39 5 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater 52 6 Slaughterhouse-Five 68 NOTES 83 BIBLIOGRAPHY 87 iii 11 Art: to maintain self against the disruptive whole ... - Theodore Roethke iv ABSTRACT SEARCH FOR A HERO: A STUDY OF THE PROTAGONISTS IN THE FIRST SIX NOVELS OF KURT VONNEGUT, JR. by Kathy Hada Master of Arts in English In the opening chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut says, 11 When I got home from the Second World War ••• , I thought it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen 11 (p. 2). In fact, however, he could not write about his experiences in the war--the firebombing of Dresden in particular--for twenty three years, after writing five novels. As numerous critics have noted and Vonnegut himself has alluded, the destruction of Dresden was the destruction of Kurt Vonnegut. He went to war with a world view founded on order, stability, and justice, but encountered a world filled with insanity, absurdity, and irrationality. -
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. -
“The Fraudulent Light in Mother Night,” Susan Farrell, College Of
Farrell, 1 Susan Farrell Department of English College of Charleston The Fraudulent Light in Mother Night “Which brings us to the arts, whose purpose, in common with astrology, is to use frauds in order to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are” (Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons, 166). Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut’s third novel, which presents itself as the “confessions” of American playwright and Nazi propagandist Howard W. Campbell, Jr., is perhaps the book in the Vonnegut canon most underappreciated and most deserving of being considered alongside Vonnegut’s best works: Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five. While several well-known Vonnegut critics do discuss the novel, it certainly hasn’t received the volume of critical attention or the place in the popular imagination spurred by these later works. I’d like to re-examine the novel briefly and suggest a somewhat different reading of it than the one suggested by most critics—a reading that places it even more firmly in line with the stylistic techniques and thematic concerns that dominate Vonnegut’s best works. While previous analyses of the book recognize Howard W. Campbell’s complicity in the Nazi regime, pointing out that his hate-filled, anti-Semitic propaganda does at least as much good for the Nazis as his secret coded messages do for the Allies, I suggest that these earlier readings do not go far enough in exploring the web of lies and pretensions that Campbell is caught up in. I argue that it is entirely plausible to read Campbell’s life as a double-agent as simply wishful thinking on his part, a lie told to justify his own reprehensible behavior. -
•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 -
Kurt Vonnegut: Brokenhearted American Dreamer
RSA Journal 21-22/2010-2011 Gregory D. Sumner Kurt Vonnegut: Brokenhearted American Dreamer I Slaughterhouse-Five first appeared in bookstores in 1969, and it remains the signature achievement of Kurt Vonnegut’s distinguished writing career. Long in gestation, it oscillates between realism and science fiction, mordant humor and grief, relieved by moments of unexpected lyrical imagery to convey the author’s experience as a young soldier in the Second World War. He recounts for us his trials after capture by the Germans during their last counter- offensive, in the chaos of the Battle of the Bulge just before Christmas 1944. Through the tragicomic alter ego “Billy Pilgrim,” we learn about Vonnegut’s six months as an object deprived of free will. We are with him standing in boxcars bound, in mysterious, stop-and-start fashion, for unknown destinations. We encounter the baseness to which people can descend, as well as the nobility to which they sometimes rise, in the most extreme situations. And of course we find out what it is like to go through the apocalypse – the firebombing of the city of Dresden on the night of February 13, 1945, which Vonnegut and about one hundred other Americans interned there miraculously survived. Then followed days and weeks when the prisoners were deployed in the process of corpse disposal – I will skip the grisly details, but imagine that task, that surreal landscape, for a moment. When he got home Vonnegut was shocked to find almost nothing about the raid in the back newspapers, and came to the conclusion that his government, abetted by the press, could lie. -
Kurt Vonnegut in Flight Ten Stone Steps Lead up from the Sidewalk To
Kurt Vonnegut in Flight Ten stone steps lead up from the sidewalk to the front door of the Manhattan th brownstone row house at 228 East 48 Street where Kurt Vonnegut lived for the last thirty-four years of his life. He’d walked up and down those stairs on thousands of days, but on the sunny afternoon of March 14, 2007, he descended them for the last time. Taking his little dog out for their usual walk, Vonnegut apparently got tangled up in his pet’s leash and fell face forward onto the sidewalk. The resulting blow to his head sent him into a coma from which he was unable to recover. He died on April 11. He was 84. It was the end of one of the most remarkable lives of any great novelist of the second half th of the 20 Century. Vonnegut’s final fall was foreshadowed by the circumstances of an anecdote Kurt had loved to tell about his beloved sister Alice’s sense of humor. Kurt, Alice, and their older brother Bernard had grown up delighting in the vaudeville-style slapstick humor of the 1930s. On radio and in film, “Amos and Andy,” Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and other great comics portrayed ordinary people matter-of-factly persisting though insults, eye-pokes, and pratfalls, and thereby succeeding in turning pain into humor. Vonnegut’s anecdote about Alice described how the biggest laugh they ever shared happened one day when a city bus stopped suddenly right beside them: its door flew open, and an unfortunate passenger was thrown out (“horizontally,” as Alice afterwards insisted) onto the sidewalk at their feet. -
ANTWORDPROFILER ANALYSIS of the NOVELS of KURT VONNEGUT, JR., AS SET in OPPOSITION to the GSL, the AWL, and the BNC/COCA WORD-FAMILY LISTS MA Thesis
UNIVERSITY OF TARTU DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE ANTWORDPROFILER ANALYSIS OF THE NOVELS OF KURT VONNEGUT, JR., AS SET IN OPPOSITION TO THE GSL, THE AWL, AND THE BNC/COCA WORD-FAMILY LISTS MA thesis EDMUND ALEXANDER DALTON SUPERVISOR: ASSOC. PROF. REET SOOL TARTU 2014 2 ABSTRACT This thesis was conceived in response to an article titled “How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening?” by Paul Nation, in which a selection of written and spoken texts are analyzed with a vocabulary-profiling program called Range. In his article, certain texts that are thereby posited to typify discrete categories, such as the genre of the novel, are measured against the frequency-based lists of 14,000 word families, along with an additional list of proper nouns, compiled from the British National Corpus. The current study, however, takes a revised approach that is encapsulated in a 2013 journal paper titled “Mid-frequency readers”, by Nation and Laurence Anthony. They apply AntWordProfiler for computer-assisted analysis of educational literature by the lists of 25,000 word families, as well as those of marginal words, that have been made from the British National Corpus in conjunction with the Corpus of Contemporary American English. Moreover, their work includes a concise definition of the concepts of high-, mid-, and low-frequency vocabulary. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to adopt and optimize an established methodology applicable to statistical analysis of the active vocabulary of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and its evolution over a 45-year period that encompasses his career as a novelist.